A Euro 330 million loan which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved for Bosnia and Herzegovina in April this year to help the country address the novel coronavirus crisis was unblocked on Tuesday after the state ministers agreed on how the funds would be distributed.
According to the decision formally adopted at the Tuesday session of Bosnia's Council of Ministers, the amount would be distributed in a way that Bosniak-Croat shared Federation (FBiH) entity gets 61.5% of the amount for its ten cantons and the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS) entity gets 37.5%, while Brcko District, a separate administrative unit in the north, would get 1% o the whole amount.
The money has been blocked for months due to the political bickering and inability of political leaders to agree on how would the money be distributed among various levels of authority.
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While Croat ministers claimed it was due to the objections of Bosniak ministers and their “unacceptable and unfounded” proposals on how to divide the money, the Bosniak ministers said it was Croats’ proposal that was not in line with the Letter of Intent sent to IMF.
The disagreement and failure of the state government to reach an agreement have triggered the EU and the US embassies to call for immediate unblocking of the funds, for the sake of the citizens.
