BUDGET FOR 2023 Base salary calculation is the same for everyone, renouncing an increase is a 'hollow story'

(Patria) - The BiH Council of Ministers today adopted the Draft Budget of BiH Institutions with a base of 600 KM. In practice, this means that there will be a new increase in salaries for both elected and appointed officials, although the goal was to increase the salaries of soldiers, police officers, and employees with lower incomes.

Representatives from three political parties, NIP, Our Party, and People and Justice, announced today that ministers and deputy ministers in the BiH Council of Ministers are renouncing this increase.

"We decided to legally separate the salaries of elected and appointed officials from those of employees at the state level, and until then, to renounce the increase. We adopted this at the Council of Ministers. We will also call on our deputies in the House of Representatives and the House of Peoples to renounce it. Of course, it is still possible in the parliamentary procedure to reduce the salaries of ministers and deputies," stated the Trojka (Trio).

On the other hand, the BiH Minister of Finance and Treasury, Zoran Tegeltija, stated that the range of the lowest and highest salaries will be discussed, but did not specify when this would happen or from when it would apply.

Tegeltija noted that the timing of the budget adoption is an important issue, adding that disbursements from the single account, salaries, and personal income of employees at the BiH level will remain at the current level until the budget is adopted. He believes that the budget can be adopted by the end of March.

Renouncing part of the salary with the current legal solution is not possible because the calculation and payment of salaries for BiH institutions are carried out by the BiH Ministry of Finance and Treasury using a centralized salary payment system. All of this was already told during the adoption of the previous budget when officials' salaries also increased. At that time, the Trojka called ideas about renouncing salary increases or donating to humanitarian purposes populism, and now they are doing the same thing.

At the end of February, the House of Representatives of the BiH Parliamentary Assembly supported the principles of the Bill on Amendments to the Law on Salaries and Benefits in the Institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, proposed by MP Šerif Špago (SDA), which provides for a different calculation of the base salary after the increase in the base amount.

- We proposed that the base salary be determined in three ways. For job positions for which coefficients from 1.20 to 3.99 are prescribed, the base salary is determined by multiplying the base amount and the corresponding coefficient; for job positions for which coefficients from 4.00 to 5.55 are prescribed, the base salary is determined by multiplying 0.9 (nine tenths) of the base amount and the corresponding coefficient, and for job positions for which coefficients from 5.56 to 10.00 are prescribed, the base salary is determined by multiplying 0.85 (eighty-five hundredths) of the base amount and the corresponding coefficient. Thus, with this third salary calculation, we would annul the salary increases, and officials are mostly in this range - Špago explained.

However, this law was only adopted in the first reading, and it is still far from the House of Peoples, which means that its application is still uncertain, and the budget will likely be adopted sooner. According to the BiH Constitution, the income of officials cannot be reduced during their mandate, so this will likely also be a problem, and increased payments will continue.

At the session of the House of Peoples of the BiH PS on March 28, two proposals for amendments to the Law on Salaries and Benefits in the Institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the House of Representatives of the BiH PS will be considered. One relates to the determination of salary grades and coefficients for salary payments according to those grades, and the other to the minimum and maximum amount of severance pay.

However, there is very little time left to prevent a new attack on the state budget, and well-paid officials and dignitaries will clearly become even better paid.