More than 70,000 permits were issued for Bosnians to work in EU countries alone last year and political leaders must realise that the trend of people leaving the country is the biggest threat for the long-term survival of the state, economic analyst Faruk Hadzic tod N1 on Friday.
“Before the latest results of Eurostat, the figures from 2018 marked a record with 53,000 working permits issued for EU countries, and this number now has surprised us analysts a bit. Last year, 71,300 licenses were issued, and now Eurostat has updated the data for Sweden as well, which means a thousand more permits – and this is only data in regard to EU countries,” Hadzic said.
RELATED NEWS
He explained that the data only includes permits that are issued for periods longer than three months.
“Slovenia and Croatia are similar when it comes to their figures, and a lot of Bosnians go to work in Croatia while there are a lot of people from Bosnia joining their family members who work in Slovenia. As for Germany, Bosnians go there both for work and to unite with family members,” he explained.
When it comes to the reasons behind Bosnians leaving the country, Hadzic explained that the least amount of Bosnians who left did so for education and most left for jobs and to reunite with family.
“This is alarming, that entire families are leaving Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it’s questionable how this will affect the overall functioning of the state. The number of births and workforce is decreasing,” he said.
“We are already a country of old people,” he stressed.
“We have 698,000 pensioners and 466,000 pupils and students. This shows a big disparity. This year we got 10,000 more pensioners,” he said, adding that in Bosnia’s semi-autonomous Federation (FBiH) region, 240 million Bosnian Marks were paid more for pensions than was collected through payroll contributions.
“We did not have that money and we had to reimburse it from other sources – loans. Part of the money we got from the IMF will have to go toward pensions,” Hadzic explained.
The trend of people leaving the country is a reason for slow economic growth as citizens do not see a future in Bosnia and the coronavirus pandemic has made it even worse, he said.
“The question is what will happen next year because we have no vision for what the economic goals will be,” Hadzic argued, adding that people do not see that anything will change in the country in the coming years.
“Our politicians must understand that this is the number one problem of our survival as a state, so we will all, especially those in politics, have to start solving this problem,” he said.
