BOSNIA NEWS

SARAJEVO,Bosnia - Malaysia has been urged to expand its Islamic banking to Bosnia due to the rising interest in such products and services, according to the Bosnian first Islamic Bank CEO.

Amer Bukvic of Bosna Bank International made an impassioned plea to the Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to encourage Malaysian banks to capitalise on their expertise in Islamic financial banking and invest in Bosnia.

"And this is where Malaysia has the edge. You should move fast to benefit from the increasing interest in Islamic banking," he said when elaborating on his question to the Malaysian Prime Minister during the Malaysia-Bosnia Business Forum yesterday.

Apart from Islamic banking, issues ranging from as diverse as barter trade to halal and mineral water and health spa products were raised during Abdullahs dialogue with more than 700 Malaysian and Bosnian businessmen and captains of industry.

Bukvic said Malaysia was, in fact, indirectly represented in Bosnia as his bank was established by the Islamic Development Bank of which the Malaysian government was among the owners.

However, he said, Malaysian banks should expand directly to the Bosnian market since it had a well established Islamic financial system covering banking, insurance, Takaful and other products.

He noted that there were 34 European banks in Bosnia, all of which were making huge profits as the financial sector was well regulated.

Their investments are in excess of one billion euros as the top few banks alone are worth around 100 million euros each, said Bukvic, who is an alumni of the International Islamic University in Petaling Jaya.

He added the state faculty was establishing an MBA in Islamic finance due to the rising interest in such products.

In his response earlier, Abdullah urged the Malaysian delegation to take note of Bukvics remarks about the prospects of expanding Islamic banking services in Bosnia.

The Malaysian Prime Minister stressed that Islamic banking was not exclusively for Muslims but for non-Muslims too.

He added that Malaysias commercial and foreign banks had Islamic windows while some Islamic banks specifically set up by businessmen or banks from the Middle East were doing very well.

Their support, he added, came not only from Muslims but non-Muslims as well as they wanted to take advantage of the Islamic banking and financial services.

The Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi also said yesterday that Bosnia could be a good link between his country and Europe and agreed to economic cooperation.

"We consider Bosnia as a good passage or door to the entire Europe and its markets," Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said, speaking in Sarajevo at the start of an official two-day visit to Bosnia and after talks with his Bosnian counterpart Nikola Spiric.

The two premiers agreed that better economic cooperation needed to be developed between the two countries, particularly in the military field and agriculture.

Malaysia, he said, was also interested in infrastructure development in Bosnia and would like to see its companies working on the C5 corridor, a multi-billion-dollar project to build a highway connecting Central Europe with the Adriatic coast via Bosnia.

Making the first concrete steps in economic cooperation, Bosnia's Finance Minister Dragan Vrankic and Malaysian Foreign Minister Sved Hamid Albar signed yesterday an agreement on avoiding the double taxation and preventing the tax evasion between the two countries.

The Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi also met with the members of the Bosnian Presidency in Sarajevo.

SARAJEVO,Bosnia – The Bosnian Council of Ministers adopted the policy of salaries in Bosnian state institutions for the period 2007-2010. Bosnia's Prime Minister Nikola Spiric expressed hope that the policy will provide a good guideline from the future state law in this field.

Spiric told a press conference after the session that this policy aims at reducing public spending and ensuring equal payment for the same performance, which, according to him, means that there will be certain “reductions, but also possible certain salary increases”.

The Bosnian Council of Ministers will draft bylaws in this field, and will not leave them at the will of “those specially authorised” for determining salaries, Spiric said but refused to name such institutions or state bodies.

“We wish to bring order to this field”, he said.He also said that the Council of Ministers adopted for the first time the State Strategy for fighting violence against children for the period 2007-2010.

The Council of Ministers also adopted the report on the implementation of the last year’s Budget of the Bosnian State Institutions and the implementation of this year’s Budget for the first quarter. He said that the last year’s budget, as well as the budget for the first quarter of this year, was characterised by revenues greater than spending and that a budget rebalance is planned for this year in order to transfer money from 2006.

Revenues in 2006 totalled 696.657.756 Bosnian Marks, or 107 percent of what was planned, while spending totalled 655.110.747 Bosnian Marks, or 87 percent of what was planned. Bosnia serviced its foreign debt with 269,55 million Bosnian Marks last year.

According to the report on the implementation of the budget for the first quarter of this year revenues totalled 162.904.320 Bosnian Marks and spending totalled 141.152.523 Bosnian Marks, which is 25 percent less than what has been planned.

Bosnia continues to service it foreign debt on time and it paid 54,71 million Bosnian Marks for these purposes during the first quarter.

Also,the Bosnian Council of Ministers defined three pieces of legislation: the Proposal of the Law changing and amending the Law on Criminal Process, the Proposal of the Law changing and amending the Law on Administrative Disputes and the Proposal of the Law on Electronic Legal and Business Traffic.

The Council of Ministers failed to reach agreement on considering the decision that would put out of effect the Decision on changing the holding of the name of the right to dispose with real-estate registered with the land registry lot LV/20 k.o, Spiric said. He expressed regret that OHR will have to intervene in this case.

He also said that BiH needs to come to the first draft law on state property and overcome political disputes on this matter.

Asked by journalists to explain what is the problem with defining the Bosnian state property and whether entities wish to register certain property as their own and only then transfer it to the state level, Spiric said that the road towards the future law in this field requires prior political agreement on what state property is and what is the property of the lower levels of authority.

He called on all relevant parties in Bosnia to engage in open dialogue on this matter and underlined that the problem of this country is the lack of open dialogue and agreement, which is sometimes reached with international assistance.

Spiric also said that the Bosnian government adopted the report on the work of the Bosnian State Agency for Investigation and Protection (SIPA) and added that he personally commended the agency for its performance.

SARAJEVO,Bosnia – A meeting was held yesterday in Sarajevo at the Bosnian Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations between Vilim Primorac and G.V. Srinivas, Advisor for Political and Economic Issues of Indian Embassy in Hungary.

The meeting was organized at the demand of Indian Embassy. The officials talked about ratification of Agreement on Promotion and Protection of Investments and about adjustment of the Agreement between the Bosnian and Indian governments on cooperation in culture, science and education sectors.

Several agreements are being adjusted; most of them treating the issues of double taxation avoidance, air traffic, legal help and extradition and IT.

Srinivas emphasized that India is highly interested in investing in Bosnia, especially in metal industry and bigger companies still owned by the state.

India is also interested in offering all kinds of training for SME representatives.He also announced that the Ambassador of India to Hungary will visit Bosnia in July.

They also talked about a possibility of opening the Indian diplomatic mission to Bosnia.

The officials agreed that the third joint committee for investments protection should be organized later in the year. They also agreed that the cooperation between the two countries should intensify.

Indian capital has been present in Bosnia in different sectors: industry, mining, tourism, banking, pharmacy…