Six of the seven coal mines from Bosnia's electric company 'Elektroprivreda BiH' made the largest loss in five years worth 77 million Bosnian marks (some €39 mil). Since 2017, the revenues of these mines have been constantly falling and today they are lower by over 53 million Bosnian marks, salaries and contributions are not paid regularly, they owe taxes and concession fees to the state, and short-term liabilities at the end of last year amounted to almost 800 million marks, which is much more than before, the Transparency International (TI) said in their analysis.

The analysis shows that mines are in most cases over-indebted and that they have limited opportunities to improve their business through debt.

According to the TI, despite the difficult financial situation, there are numerous examples of unscrupulous business, dubious public procurement, irrational business decisions and withdrawal of money from the coffers of these companies, which indicates the possibility of corruption.

“Auditors note that this is especially evident when renting machinery and equipment, where through non-transparent procedures, contracts worth millions are often awarded to the same companies, to the detriment of these public companies,” the TI BiH claims.

The analysis clearly shows that the financial situation in the mines of Elektroprivreda BiH is very bad and that without the reforms that have been delayed for years, the situation can only get worse. The TI BiH has been warning for years about the problem of over-employment and misuse of resources of these public companies, but despite this, the practice has continued. Despite court rulings and auditors’ warnings, privileged private companies have been getting lucrative jobs in the mines for years, from which they make millions in profits while the mines accumulate debts.

The management of Elektroprivreda BIH recently admitted that it has over 2,200 redundant workers and that this number refers exclusively to administrative staff, while the lack of production workers was emphasized, which the TI BiH pointed out years earlier.

The Elektroprivreda BiH has made a decision to provide long-term loans to coal mines in order to resolve redundancies and other debts, the TI analysis says among other things.