TI publishes data on operations of public enterprises in BiH: Highest salary of Sarajevo Airport director

BANJA LUKA, (Patria) - Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH) has created a database on the operations of public sector enterprises. The portal Transparentno.ba has published the most important information for 230 public enterprises, providing a summary overview of their efficiency, number of employees, and impact on the economy as a whole.

The data shows that in most public enterprises, a consistently low level of liquidity is evident, and five public enterprises with the largest losses in BiH, which include Railways of FBiH, Railways of RS, Gras Sarajevo, VIK Sarajevo, and Agrokomerc, incur an annual loss of 90 million KM.

A cross-section of data from the database shows that these enterprises are increasingly burdening budgets through subsidies, activated guarantees, and unpaid taxes, while the most promising public enterprises, despite expectations, are paying less and less profit into the state treasury.

The collected data shows that, regardless of their business performance, many public enterprises continue to increase the number of employees and salary expenditures.

Average salaries of employees in public enterprises are significantly higher than salaries in the economy and are in no way linked to the business results of the enterprises.

The same can be said for the incomes of members of management bodies, as the collected data shows that most directors and board members receive the maximum salaries allowed by law.

In the RS, directors' incomes are limited to 3,000 KM, and this amount is received by directors of RS Forests, RS Post, RS Motorways, and other public enterprises, regardless of their financial condition. The same situation exists in the Federation of BiH, where incomes of management body members are limited to a maximum of five average salaries in this entity, so the director of Sarajevo Airport receives 5,056 KM, while two executive directors receive 4,979 KM and 4,776 KM respectively. Sarajevo Airport also stands out as the enterprise with the highest average salary.

The database also includes representation expenses of public enterprises, with the highest amounts spent for this purpose by RS Forests and Hydroelectric Power Plants on Trebišnjica, which spent more than 400,000 KM each on representation in just one year.

Transparentno.ba highlights as a special section data on how public enterprises spend money on public procurement. The data points to the widespread practice of splitting procurements and concluding direct agreements to avoid public tendering, with RMU Banovići alone spending over three million KM annually through direct agreements.

TI BiH will continue to publish and update data on public enterprises on the Transparentno.ba portal, as announced by the organization, and in the coming period, through a special section, it will also publish current information related to public procurement in order to timely point out potential irregularities and violations of the law.