Council of Ministers of BiH prevents domestic companies from producing police uniforms

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - The Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina adopted at the end of December 2017 the Rulebook on Police Uniforms, which prevents domestic manufacturers from even participating in public procurement that police agencies at the BiH level will announce in the future.

This causes incalculable damage to the domestic industry. Hundreds of jobs are directly threatened. The Rulebook prescribes specific technical criteria that are met only by one type of uniform, which is produced outside BiH and whose exclusive representative for BiH is one domestic trading company.

The BH Consortium of Manufacturers of Police and Military Equipment, consisting of MEN d.o.o. Travnik, Koteks d.o.o. Tešanj, ZENKO d.o.o. Zenica, Tekstilna industrija d.o.o. Mostar, Uslužnost d.o.o. Sarajevo, Sparta d.o.o. Banja Luka, Miltex d.o.o. Banja Luka, K.L.M. Prnjavor and Belt d.o.o. Banja Luka, has been asking the leaders of the Council of Ministers of BiH for two months to receive them for a meeting and hear our arguments. Unfortunately, so far we have encountered only silence and disregard.

The members of the BH Consortium are companies with decades of experience in the production of police and military uniforms, as well as other police and military equipment. These companies employ more than 1,000 workers. They fulfill all their obligations on time and in accordance with the law.

They achieve tens of millions of BAM in annual revenue, half of which comes from exports, whose value increases year after year. Police uniforms produced in BiH are used by police forces in Austria, Switzerland and other countries.

The BH Consortium requests from the Council of Ministers of BiH to ensure that domestic companies and their nearly 1,000 workers in their own country have the right to do the work they have specialized in for years and for which they have proven to be more than successful. Any quality criteria prescribed, the BH Consortium will support and is ready to meet.

What we cannot meet are the technical characteristics of certain products and materials that are protected and favored. The disputed Rulebook will lead to an enormous increase in budget allocations for police uniforms, as there will be no competition in the public procurement process. Who benefits from the unnecessary squandering of public funds spent for these purposes is just one of the open questions?

Through this, we publicly call on the Council of Ministers of BiH and, above all, the Minister of Security of BiH, Dragan Mektić, to open a dialogue with domestic manufacturers in order to reach a mutually acceptable solution. We also call on representatives of the Ministry of Security of BiH to visit domestic factories and see for themselves the capacities and capabilities of BiH manufacturers. The BH Consortium does not seek any privileges or preferential status from the Council of Ministers of BiH.

We seek the opportunity and possibility to compete under equal conditions for the procurement of products we have specialized in for years and which meet the strictest quality standards. We ask that in BiH we have the same conditions we have in other European countries where we work and where we have the opportunity to work, while such an opportunity is denied to us in our own country, which is a precedent probably not recorded anywhere - stated the representatives of the BH Consortium of Manufacturers of Military and Police Equipment.