The fuel price in Bosnia’s Federation (FBiH) entity has gone up for the fifth time this year. The consumers said the price change was yet another assault on their budgets.

Officially, the fuel price in FBiH has increased by 0.05 Bosnian marks (approx EUR 0.027) and it now amounts to BAM 2.41 (approx EUR 1.31). The oil distributors said the price change was inevitable owing to the changes on the global market.

“The crude oil barrel price has increased so much that the price increase had to follow even earlier. I believe it is realistic and justified,” said Milenko Boskovic of the FBiH Association of Oil Distributors, adding that the price increase does not match the citizens’ standard.

FBiH Ministry of Trade, which regulates the fuel price, has received several hundreds of requests for the price change over the past days which now ranges from BAM 2.26 to 2.41, depending on oil distributor.

The situation is similar in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska (RS) entity. The prices in this part of the country have gone up a week ago.

The crude oil price on the global market has increased since the beginning of this year by 25 percent. The price is stagnating these days and it ranges between USD 72 per barrel on the US market and USD 82 on the UK market.

Before Bosnian authorities introduced additional excise taxes on fuel in February this year, the price was lower than BAM 2 per litre and today it reaches almost BAM 2.50. The excise tax has brought BAM 138 million of profit since the beginning of the year until mid-July, which the two Bosnia’s entities shared proportionally.

(EUR 1 = BAM 1.95)