STATISTICS AND THE ACTUAL SITUATION

Employment in B&H Federation

AIM Sarajevo, 11 June, 1997

The current situation on the territory of B&H Federation, despite all the efforts invested in revival of production and opening of new jobs, cannot be considered to be rosy. Judging by the official statistical indicators, industrial production in April in reference to the previous period has dropped by as much as 7.5 per cent which marked continuation of the downward trend present since the beginning of the year.

Statistics has always offered an opportunity for its indicators to be used equally pro and con in discussions depending on the angel of vision, that is according to the principle that a glass which is has been half-filled with water can both be considered to be half-full and half-empty.

According to the assessment of the federal prime minister Edhem Bicakcic, the economic situation is quite good and that what has been achieved so far can be considered to be a success. Prime minister Bicakcic finds argument for this allegation also in statistics, because in reference to last year, production growth amounts to 50 per cent, which just confirms that statistical data are quite a relative matter.

    Of course, in comparison with the first months of last

year, when gun barrels had not yet cooled off, everything but a new war means great progress. It is a completely different question whether the past year and a half of reconstruction of B&H could have been better used.

Only in comparison with the data from 1991, it becomes clear how close to the bottom we still are. Average industrial production in the first four months of this year amounts to only 13 per cent of the prewar one in the same period in 1991. Those who still remember those times are aware that the entire economy was already gradually wearing out, and the standard of living starting rapidly to fall which just a year later culminated with the beginning of the war in B&H.

Summing up the accomplishments in the field of reconstruction, federal minister Nedeljko Despotovic, at a recent meeting of prime minister Bicakcic with cantonal prime ministers, established that one could generally be satisfied with what had been done, but that this was "nevertheless not what we had expected". Of course, both the authorities and the citizens had expected much more, in other words, to feel the benefits of living in peace through the rise of the standard of living.

    Employment rate as a precondition of any social peace

and guarantor of existence is a separate story. The figure of 337,860 employed citizens registered by statistics conceals 90,705 of those who are on the so-called "waiting" leave, in other word closer to the Employment Office than to a job. That a definition of statistics as a "correct sum of incorrect data" is quite justified is verfied by the number of the officially unemployed, that is those who are on the lists of the employment offices. According to the official data, there are 194,413 of them, although even statisticians admit that this number is actually several times larger. How correct this is cannot be claimed by anybody, because the calculation is marred by illegal mass employment. The figures about the number of illegally employed persons are manipulated depending on somebody's momentary needs. Therefore, assessments about their number range between 40 thousand all the way to 150 thousand on the territory of the Federation, alone.

While the few working plants are gasping out life under the burden of taxes the state has imposed on the salaries of the employees, the state is justifying the fact that duties are so high by the mass of "illegal workers" as the main problem. The solution is being sought in making them legal, and then "maybe it would be possible to consider reduction of taxes and constributions". Warning of employers that, on the contrary, any radical reduction of illegal labour can be taken into consideration only after reducing duties to a reasonable and acceptable level, customary in the world for a state chronically without money, obviously is not sufficiently convincing.

Everything that was expected from this year, a significant growth of employment rate, moving of domestic economy from the standstill, will, despite the best of wishes, have to wait. Possible postponement of the Donors' Conference and absence of the expected inflow of fresh money is the main reason for dying down of the just initiated process of reconstruction of B&H.

It is clear that this time responsibility does not lie on the international community but on representatives in joint institutions of B&H, primarily those of Republica Srpska, and their lack of readiness to transform obligations from the Dayton accords into laws which was a condition made by the world for convening the Donors' Conference.

When speaking of B&H Federation, a part of the cause of its economic exhaustion certainly lies in the fact that after several months of waiting, the package of laws on privatization still has not been adopted. Probably due to the fact that federal parliamentarians have more urgent matters to attend to, such as the bitter battle for "vital national interests" which are at the moment personified in the law on formation of new municipalities, but it is not impossible that one of these days when all these vital national interests are coordinated, the law on privatization may also be put on the agenda. If there will still be anything left to be privatized.

    And while the former election promises about "Bosnia

like Switzerland" have been long forgotten, growing social discontent threatens to escalate into an uncontrolled explosion. Statistical data, however hard they may try to confirm that we are better off now than we used to be, they are still not sufficient to fill our stomachs. In this case the answer to the question "do you believe yourself or statistics more" is logical. It is - statistics, of course.

Drazen SIMIC