The lower chamber of Bosnia’s parliament, the House of Representatives, approved on December 12, the 2014 central state budget draft, Dnevni Avaz daily reported. The bill was supported by 23 MPs, 14 voted against and two lawmakers abstained.
The upper chamber of the parliament, the House of Peoples, is expected to start debating next year’s budget on December 16. The 2014 budget framework amounts to BAM 1.796bn (EUR 918mn), including BAM 950mn financing for the state-level institutions and BAM 846mn for servicing the country's foreign debt, up BAM 58mn compared to this year's plan.
Even though Bosnia's two-entities - the Federation and the Serb Republic managed to endorse their budgets by the IMF’s December 9 deadline, a disagreement in the country's tripartite presidency delayed the submission of the state-level budget draft to parliament.
As a result, the IMF postponed for January 2014 the fifth review under Bosnia’s EUR 390mn stand-by loan deal and the country’s request for extension and enlargement of the agreement, the fund’s resident representative in Sarajevo, Ruben Atoyan has said earlier in December.
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