Prime Minister of the Republic of Srpska Radovan Višković presented the Proposal of the 2020-2022 Economic Reform Program and 2020 Budget Proposal to the management of the Chamber of Commerce of the Republic of Srpska and the business community.   

Prime Minister Viskovic said that the Government in cooperation with the social partners set  seven priority areas and the accompanying measures.  

"Those are raising competitiveness and productivity of the economy, sustainable health sector, better management of public enterprises, education tailored to the needs of the economy, improving demographic situation, information technology and international regional cooperation", Prime Minister said and emphasized that the 2020-2022 Economic Reform Program  2020-2022 has been prepared in accordance with the European standards.

"We have a framework that we get from the European Commission that we have to respect and comply with. As the concrete result of this Document we will prepare the Government Action Plan which will be drafted after these documents are adopted and will be made available to the public and on the website of the Government of Republic of Srpska", Prime Minister Višković explained.

Prime Minister further said that one million BAM is foreseen for the economy within the budget of the Ministry of Energy and Mining and one million in the Ministry of Economy and Entrepreneurship whereas a grant for the incentives in technological business development is also planned.

"In addition to that there is also BAM 7.9 million for the refund of the portion of taxes and contributions pursuant to the Law on Incentives. There is also Law on Contributions where the rate for employment will be reduced from 0.8 to 0.6 for which nine million will be provided. We have also modified the criteria for the placement of loans by the Investment and Development Bank so that the credit line supporting businesses that introduce new technologies has now a reduced interest rate. We have also introduced a new credit line for housing loans for married couples up to 30 years of age with an interest rate below three percent", Prime Minister said.

Prime Minister Višković further said that the Government shall as of January 2020 reimburse 100% of maternity allowance to employers from the budget through the Child Protection Fund in full and for that purpose eight million would be required.

The Prime Minister underlined that with several of those measures, the Government would help the domestic economy with around 30 million in the budget for 2020.

Referring to the 2020 Draft Budget amounting to BAM 3,425,000,000 Prime Minister Višković stated that it was 108 million higher than the 2019 Adjusted Budget whereas it was 168 million more compared to the 2019 Budget Plan.

"As the result of the enactment of law in the National Assembly, primarily on the increase of  salaries for budget users, 70 million will be required and there will be regular pension adjustments as of January 2020, which would require around 40 million", Prime Minister said and pointed out that the budgetary framework for 2020 has been realistic.

Prime Minister Višković took the opportunity and thanked all business enterprises in Republic of Srpska for contributing to the record employment in the Republic of Srpska saying they should be commended since they fill the budget and provide revenues and pledged that the Government, together with the Chamber of Commerce, would follow the market and the region developments and create measures to further help the economy.

The Prime Minister expressed hope that a Council of Ministers and the Government of Federation of BiH would be formed soon so that a significant number of projects which are now at a standstill, could be activated including the 200 million for the investments in Elektroprenos BiH out of which 42 percent belongs to Republic of Srpska.

"What is particularly important for the Republic of Srpska and our companies is to open the issue of protection of domestic production, import tariffs, customs and everything that is causing problems for our economy", Prime Minister Viskovic said.

President of the Chamber of Commerce of Republic of Srpska, Borko Djuric said that the Chamber of Commerce played an active role in creating measures from the Economic Reform Program as in previous years and stressed that this Document underlined the competitiveness of the economy as a key issue and contained everything that should contribute to a faster and more dynamic development if ways would be found to implement these measures in a timely and appropriate manner.

Borko Djuric pointed to technological obsolescence as one of the obstacles to the competitiveness of the domestic economy and expressed hope that funds for technological development would be soon operational. He emphasized that many concrete questions and suggestions were heard at today's meeting and added that regular meetings were necessary to overcome the problems.

The meeting was attended by the Minister of Finance Zora Vidović, Minister of Scientific and Technological Development, Higher Education and Information Society Srdjan Rajčević, Minister of Health and Social Welfare Alen Šeranić, Minister of Energy and Mining Petar Djokić, Minister of Labor and Veterans Duško Milunović and Minister of Education and Culture Natalija Trivić.