Sale of the State or BH Telecom

The Government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina intends to sell BH Telecom. This would not bring citizens in the Federation cheaper services or better quality. On the contrary, it is realistic to expect that the new owner will lay off workers and reduce costs in order to recoup invested capital as quickly as possible.

“Novi list” from Rijeka published a year ago: The number of employees at HT has decreased from 11,500 to around 3,600 since privatization. Then, in 2017, HT laid off a hundred permanent employees. This telecommunications giant is replacing older workers with agency workers and students, who are much cheaper.

Serbia did not sell its national telecom operator to a foreign buyer. It offered shares to the citizens of Serbia. Telekom Srbije later expanded its operations to Bosnia and Herzegovina after purchasing Telekom Republike Srpske.

There is no doubt that the largest telecom operator in Bosnia and Herzegovina needs serious restructuring to become more competitive in the market. As far as can be understood, the current company management is not shying away from that.

Why then is the Federation Government exclusively focused on selling BH Telecom instead of improving it? For the ruling political elite in the FBiH, hundreds of millions of KM from the sale of that company would come as a godsend in an election year. The Government's main argument in the fight with the Union is the high salaries at BH Telecom. „Given the declining revenues and profits, a reduction of certain salary supplements has been proposed, which are enormously high compared to workers in public administration, and especially compared to those in the real sector.“ With such a narrative, the Government is creating an alibi in public. It fosters an atmosphere that BH Telecom is a company of sinecures. And that it should be sold. Then the Government would dispose of that money as it sees fit. As if people got jobs at BH Telecom on their own. Political parties, primarily the Party of Democratic Action, have been hiring their own cadres for years. The company's top people were not chosen by experts, but by politics. The salaries of privileged party cadres are enormous compared to the absolute majority of employees. Millions of KM have been extracted from BH Telecom for political parties before the idea of selling the golden goose even came up.

With the story about high salaries at BH Telecom, the Government is trying to gain public support. It seeks to provoke bitterness among several thousand disenfranchised workers from Željezara, Krivaja, TTU and other destroyed companies from east to west of the country. It can be said that Prime Minister Novalić and his advisors have discovered a perverse logic. They are telling us that they will not fight to raise minimum wages in the real sector to the level of telecom wages, but rather to reduce even decent wages to the level of the real sector.

Novalić's Government often makes propaganda statements to the public: We are doing great, the numbers are excellent, there is no crisis, a bright future awaits. At the same time, citizens see a completely different reality.

Taking control of a telecom also means gaining enormous influence in society, control over security, money flow, and dominance over public opinion. Many believe that selling a telecom operator is a renunciation of what they mean for a country. And something else often important: Individuals have made excellent money from the sale of valuable state-owned companies. Let us recall numerous corruption scandals in the region and the taking of bribes from those very people who pushed for the sales.