The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) today presented in Sarajevo the "Transition Report 2023-2024" under the title "Transitions Big and Small," Fena news agency reported on Friday.

“One of the main findings of the report is that it takes time to go through a transition, and a lot of it is related to productivity. We believe that we will need an effort in this country to attract more foreign investments to improve the efficiency of the public sector, especially state-owned enterprises. Also, in order to invest in digitization and automation of the economy, to support small and medium-sized enterprises so that they can do business better, and so that BiH can trade with its partners in the region, but also in Western Europe,” said the director of the Office of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Development (EBRD) in Bosnia and Herzegovina Manuela Naessl after the presentation.

According to Naessl, apart from the annual report's presentation, there was also talk of a working document on the convergence of the Western Balkans countries with the standards of Western Europe and the EU.

The EBRD Director of Transition Performance and Global Economy Department Aleksandar Plekhanov stated that this year there was a lot of work related to the challenges of the green transition.

“We noted two findings. On the one hand, it is the importance of key raw materials necessary for the green and digital transition, and we talked about how economies can benefit from increased demand for these materials, which means attracting investment and expertise, often foreign investments and foreign expertise,” said Plekhanov.

They also talked about the importance of improving green skills in line with the green transition, which is difficult to do but it will be essential.

Plekhanov said that the report emphasizes that it is very important to have the widest possible support among the population for green economy policies and that this support is often insufficient. In essence, he noted that people must feel the benefits of economic development and green transition.

The positive side that they noticed through household surveys is that people in the region, including BiH, are,in general, much more satisfied with their lives than they were fifteen or twenty years ago.

“A big improvement has been noted, from some 25 or 30 percent of respondents who said they were satisfied with living conditions to today's 55 to 60 percent who answered positively compared to some other economies.

People are still partly sceptical when it comes to investing in green policies, so in this case, the message is that people should be presented with improvements in terms of the quality of the natural environment, reduction of pollution, air quality, moving away from fossil fuels, which will contribute a lot with the green transition as well as ensuring financial support for that transition.

The coal dust in the air is very palpable here in the region of the Western Balkans when you come, for example, from London, and you really feel it in the air and then you realize that there is a lot to be done,” said Plekhanov.