CS BiH Party analyzes KS Budget for 2025: No subsidies for youth, less money for public companies, increased debt

(Patria) - The Cantonal Council of the Party for BiH Sarajevo, after a year and several statements on the problematic implementation of the 2024 budget, concludes that the Sarajevo Canton budget is in a state of "clinical death".

"In order to explain to the public the destruction that the parties of the Trojka have caused, and continue to cause, we will present only a small part of the data from the Draft Budget for 2025.

- In the 2019 budget, total expenditures for loan interest and principal amounted to 33 million KM.

Expenditures for loan interest and principal will amount to 105 million KM in the 2025 budget.

Total expenditures for salaries and employee benefits in the 2019 budget amounted to 416 million KM, while at the same time tax revenues amounted to 715 million KM.

In the 2025 budget, expenditures for salaries and employee benefits will amount to 693 million KM, while at the same time tax revenues will amount to 1.046 billion KM.

From the given data on salaries and benefits, it is evident that the increase in tax revenues is almost entirely matched by the increase in salaries and benefits, and there would be nothing problematic about that if other expenditures had not also increased, especially the increase in expenditures for loan interest and principal, by over 3 times (over 300%) compared to the period 2019/2025.

To further explain the impact of certain budget expenditures, we will present the subsidies for public companies.

Subsidies for public companies amounted to 104 million KM in the 2024 budget, while the 2025 budget provides for an amount of 28 million KM. A decrease in funds for public companies might seem like a positive signal at first, but knowing that most of these companies survive thanks to these funds, the financial basis of these companies can be expected to collapse. The losses of utility companies in 2024 will be huge, and probably historic, and this Draft signals to them that even the KS Government cannot help them.

To summarize, all the profligacy, credit debt, buying social peace for budget users, and so on, are coming due in the 2025 budget. The Trojka has achieved what no one managed in the 20 years before 2019, which is to bring Sarajevo Canton and the KS budget to the brink of collapse.

Credit debt has reached the legal maximum, and to maintain budget stability at the 2024 level, a credit debt of over 200 million KM is required, which is an impossible mission. There are no salary increases (union demand), no subsidies for youth, no subsidies for utility companies, no serious allocations for air protection, no one-time aid, no serious allocations for a new landfill, etc.

Finally, "CONGRATULATIONS" TO THE TROJKA. They have succeeded where no one else has in the FBiH, which is to closely follow the activities of the RS entity, where both budgets will experience "clinical death".

BUT UNFORTUNATELY FOR THE CITIZENS OF THE CANTON, THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING", state the Cantonal Council of the Party for BiH.