According to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report presented on Wednesday, there are about 5,000 public companies in Bosnia and Herzegovina which employ about 80,000 workers, but those do not contribute to the economy of the country enough despite the huge amount of property they own.

IMF’s representative in the country, Francisco Parodi, said that the financial situation in public companies is not good and that they owe eight billion Bosnian Marks and need to function better.

“We don’t have profitability in the public sector, there are big debts and many of them (public companies) are not managing to meet their short-term obligations. That sector could function much better,” Parodi told reporters.

He also said that governments within the country are not proving to be good company owners and that there is much to do to improve their work.

“A higher level of transparency in the work and responsibility in the public sector is sought,” he said, adding that the governments were not even fully aware of what they own during the research period for the report.

The IMF proposed that public companies should be managed by experts, regardless of their political affiliation.