Political parties doubled the costs of the campaign in just one week

Transparency International Bosnia and Herzegovina executed monitoring and analysis of the third week of pre-electoral campaign for ten selected political parties, considering their advertising in printed and electronic media.

Results of the monitoring showed that political parties that are covered by this research collectively spent around 1.7 million KM so far, which is twice more than in the first two weeks of pre-electoral campaign. Along with previously estimated 2 million KM for outdoor advertizing, total expenditure so far amounts to around 3.7 million.

This time numbers show that Stranka demokratske akcije (SDA) spent the most funds, while in the first two weeks Savez nezavisnih socijaldemokrata (SNSD) and Stranka za BiH were the biggest spenders. SDA spent over 250 thousand in seven days only and by total costs of 350 thousand KM for a campaign, it overtook SNSD (expenditure of 270 thousand KM), SBiH and Stranka za bolju buducnost (both of them spent around 250 thousand KM)

Sudden rise of advertising in electronic and printed media also raised daily expenditure, which now reaches almost 80.000 KM, or around 100 average monthly salaries in BiH. Considering the fact there is sharp increase of number of advertisements as the campaign is reaching its end, TI BiH expects that expenditures will be even multiple times higher in the last week of campaign.

For assessment of expenditures, average market prices of media space lease are used, along with the price of promotional material preparation. This research included only the most prominent electronic and printed media in BiH, while radio stations and external advertising were not covered due to lack of resources and capacities, so this numbers represent only smaller part of total expenditure.

Along with that, TI BiH unfortunately was not able to monitor the costs of Internet advertising, especially at the Web portals, where aggressive advertising of political parties is growing increasingly. In the last week of the campaign many pre-electoral gatherings are expected – where “celebrities” are often paid over 100.000 KM per performance by political parties. It is practically impossible calculate how much parties are paying for organization of these events, so it is not included in estimated costs, as well.

For all of the mentioned reasons, TI BiH considers that real costs of the campaign are going to be several times higher than estimated ones.

TI BiH will keep informing the public about costs of advertising once the campaign is over; it will also keep following all the potential irregularities in campaign financing. TI BiH once again appeals to political parties to let the citizens have the insight into quantity of spent funds and, more importantly, their sources.