Will B&H be Supplied with Natural Gas

Gas Arriving, Manager Discharged

AIM Sarajevo, 25 September, 1999

As a rule, at the end of summer, the citizens of Bosnia & Herzegovina are left without one of the most important and cheapest power sources - natural gas. As the political picture of the Federation has not changed a bit in the past few years, the citizens do not seem to be too agitated because they have grown accustomed to all kinds of shortages.

The story about gas began back in February, since the alleged debt to the Russian supplier dates back since then. It ended, or rather continued, a few days ago when Gaseksport ceased to believe Bosnian fine promises. When the debt reached the figure of four million dollars, inflow of gas was turned off. In the meantime, two million dollars for repaying the debt suddenly "turned up" from somewhere, so "gas will be coming any time now".

The official buyer of natural gas B&H Gas has shifted most of the responsibility for this situation to end users, but also to the biggest debtors - Sarajevan heating plants and Sarajevogas. In fact, it was assumed that the bill would be paid by the citizens, but it "burst" on the other end. The long conflict between prime minister of the Federation Edhem Bicakcic and manager of B&H Gas Enver Kreso escalated. The outcome - Kreso was relieved of duty and he is willing to talk bluntly about the reasons that forced him to seek for a new job, but too late. "The problem is", says Kreso, "that B&H Gas annoys Bicakcic" (both literally and metaphorically):

"I was thrown out of the game, and the others were not even punished. Why? Because the conception according to which B&H Gas would be a single transporting public corporation on the level of the state with two share-holders, the Republic of Srpska and the Federation, was contrary to the conception of prime minister Bicakcic. Everything was agreed at the meeting held in the building of the government of the Federation on 9 September, when prime minister Bicakcic threatened with transformation of B&H Gas into a unit of Energoinvest. If the management board had not removed me from office, the federal minister would have relieved them", said Kreso to journalists on Friday, 24 September. On that same day on the central daily news program of OBN, repeating that "Bicakcic is annoyed by the principle of B&H which I advocated and according to which B&H Gas would be on the level of the state, and not the entities", Kreso resignedly, almost remorsefully admitted:

"Never mind, I have deserved something like this to happen to me because I was silent when Suman, Busatlic, Sadinlija, were removed from posts". These are the heads of large enterprises, PTT, Energoinvest, Sipad, respectively. Needless to say, they were all members of the same ruling party - the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), so that the conflict between Bicakcic and Kreso can be treated as a conflict within the ruling party. Now that they have clashed, Kreso is "laying down the cards on the table" and he says that among other, the problem lies in the fact that users of the transportation system, Sarajevogas from Lukavica (RS) and Sarajevogas from Sarajevo (Federation), have their own calculations: "I as the manager of B&H Gas did not know the purchasing price of gas, but according to data of English company NERA just in 1998, at the border of Bosnia & Herzegovina they were by about 40 per cent higher than in other European countries", says Kreso, and reveals that B&H might very soon be forced to face another big debt: "Turkish govrnment has pomised to pay back a part of the debt of six million dollars made previously, but I personally doubt that this arrangement has actually been agreed. There is another debt of 5.9 million dollars about which I do not know any details, but I do know that because of it the price of gas went up by five dollars per thousand cubic metres of gas", says Kreso who was releaved of the duty of the manager on the day when he was supposed to continue talks in Budapest with a company the name of which is allegedly a business secret and which had offered Bosnia & Herzegovina gas at a lower price, more favourable conditions and lower expenses of transportation and the German mark as the unit of accounting instead of the American dollar, in order to reduce exchange losses. According to Kreso's words, European or maybe even a lower price would be achieved. to

"I would not like to jump to conclusions, but it is symptomatic that I was suddenly stopped", says Kreso. No matter how Kreso came up with the short end of the stick in the battle against Bicakcic, the story about the price of gas, at least when end users are concerned, is still on the margins. It is hardly probable that the authorities will resort to the least popular measure. In fact, the answer is quite simple - fearing social disorders and bad pre-election effects, the authorities shrink from forcing the users of gas to citizens' obedience (to pay their debts). Peace at home is the most important thing for them, and internal debts can be paid by short-term interventions from various budgets as it has already been done with the money of Sarajevan tax payers.

Although this weekend the valves on the pipeline will be opened again, supplying of B&H with gas will remain topical.

Zana ANDRIJEVIC-KARIC

(AiM Sarajevo)