Republic of Srpska for sale by direct bargaining

Banja Luka, December 07, 2011. – Transparency International Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH) calls for prevention of adoption of the legal solutions that would enable the sale of the community land by direct bargaining.

In fact, the Government of the Republic of Srpska announced new legal solutions that allow direct sales of building sites on the grounds, which would be applicable to municipalities “when it is in their interest to achieve certain investments, if it would result in the construction of factory operations, provide additional employment and create direct benefit to municipalities.” In this way, not only could any sale of land be considered an investment, but it could facilitate the sale at much lower price than the real one, bringing losses to municipalities and tremendous opportunity to private companies and individuals to make profit.

On the other part, given the close links between local government and private sector, especially construction companies, this could lead to numerous abuses and the sale of land would be completely transparent.

The Government of the Republic of Srpska is obviously trying to seize the opportunity to provide benefits at low prices to companies and individuals who are close to the government, according to which local-self government employees and citizens themselves would be aggrieved.

TI BiH once again appeals to the single institution to prevent adoption of such regulations and consider the damage of local budgets and citizens being caused by this practice.