Parliament Session Interrupted Due to Čović's Christmas Reception: Budget for 2018 on Hold

The session of the House of Representatives of the BiH Parliament was interrupted without reaching the agenda item concerning the discussion of the Draft Budget for 2018. The session was interrupted because tonight, Dragan Čović, Chairman of the BiH Presidency, is hosting a Christmas reception in the BiH Parliament building.

The session was interrupted during the discussion of amendments to the Election Law proposed by HDZ BiH, and it will be announced later when the session will continue.

It is known that the Budget for the next year must be adopted by the end of this year, so it is expected that next week will be turbulent in the BiH Parliament. We remind you that SBB will not support the Budget without the adopted amendment that redirects the budget reserve, distributed by the members of the BiH Presidency and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, to social categories and sports.

Without SBB's support, it is unlikely that the Budget can pass in the House of Representatives.

Otherwise, the BiH Council of Ministers determined on November 22 the Draft Law on the budget of BiH institutions and BiH's international obligations for the next year in the amount of KM 1,954,062,329. The budget for financing institutions remains KM 950 million, although the total user requests were higher by KM 333,727,000 or 36 percent. 

Revenues for servicing external debt amount to KM 1,004,062,329 and are lower by about KM 7.1 million compared to this year, so the budget totals KM 1,954,062,329. 

The budget includes, among other things, funds for the implementation of general elections next year, for multi-year projects of budget users and the operationalization of the state prison, as well as funds for the calculation of salaries for police officers due to the legally adopted change in their coefficients.

The total amount allocated for the payment of salaries and benefits in entities financed from the state budget amounts to KM 559,264,000 and is higher by KM 8,637,000 compared to the Budget for 2017.