The main political parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina did not display accurate data on the expenses of the election campaign advertising, according to Transparency International BiH.

According to an analysis of election campaign reports that the political parties presented, the Transparency International found those reports were not accurate.

“Fifteen political parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina displayed in its post-election reports covering the recent local election the advertisement expenses in the amount of 4.5 million marks (approx 2.3 million euro). But, only the costs of media and external advertisement (on billboards) which Transparency International in BiH (TI BiH) recorded during the last campaign exceeds this amount by at least 1.8 million marks (approx 900,000 euro), which clearly shows the political parties did not provide real information on financing,” said the TI BiH.

The TI BiH research referred to the advertisement on billboards, for which the parties spent some 3.58 million marks (approx 1.8 million euro), and it included only 70 of 142 local communities. The analyses did not record the costs of online and other sorts of advertisement as there is no official data on that but it indicates that the total amount the political parties used in the campaign is far higher.

On the other hand, data on media advertising collected for the needs of TI BiH by a media monitoring agency shows that 15 political parties spent at least 2.79 million marks (around 1.4 million euro) on the production and advertisements in media.

“TI BiH has been warning for years about the lack of the Law on Financing of Political Parties, which allows parties to bypass the declaration of all revenues and expenditures, which the latest post-election financial reports of the political parties published by the Central Election Commission (CEC) showed,” said the analyses.

TI BIH