Softić: Inflation in BiH currently above 7 percent

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - The guest of today's FTV show "Rezime" was the Governor of the Central Bank of BiH, Senad Softić, who says that inflation estimates are ungrateful and that all deviate by 5% from all international institutions, including the Central Bank of BiH.

"Currently, it is slightly above 7% in BiH. Inflation is truly a global problem, the whole of Europe and the world have faced it. The specific characteristic of this inflation is that it is not on the demand side, as was the case before, but on the supply side. Namely, very high input costs such as oil, gas, food affect the prices of final products and services, so this significant price increase is precisely initiated by these high energy prices, as well as the supply chain disruptions that have been present for a long time, since the pandemic. I hope the war in Ukraine will end as soon as possible and that we can try to solve this burning issue thereby."

He explains that the estimate is ungrateful because the circumstances are highly uncertain.

"We had our estimates in November which indicated that inflation in the first half of the year would be around 4%. However, we already know today that the first half of the year is approaching 9%, over 8%, not only in BiH but also in Europe and the world. As for the gross domestic product, we also had those estimates. Now they have been revised again regarding these future periods. They will go down, inflation is going up, with the fact that we now have reliable data that our gross domestic product grew significantly more last year than our projection. We had a projection of 5.8%, today it is certain that our GDP growth rate was 7.1 or 7.2%, which is very good for last year."