Owners of vehicles in the RS could find themselves on the receiving end of a new increase in the cost of their registration, if the decree on the amount of the annual fee for public roads is adopted and applied.
The Ministry of Transport and Communications announced that they did not agree to an increase in the amount of compensation by 6 to 40 percent, while carriers point out that not only is there no room for this type of cost to grow, but they should be significantly lower.
The president of the Association of Transporters of the RS, Nikola Grbić, tells Avaz that he owns a company registered in Slovenia, and that vehicle registration costs in Bosnia and Herzegovina are the highest in the region.
Roads from credit
– A few months ago, we asked the RS Government to reduce the registration costs, there is room for them to be up to 50 percent lower, but they did not even want to consider such an initiative, we already have a proposal to increase the costs. Allegedly because of roads, and we know very well that every meter of roads is built from loans. Registration of a 25-ton trailer in Slovenia costs around 100 euros, and here it costs 1,600 KM. For the registration of a truck and trailer in Slovenia, you will pay up to 600 euros, and here it is about 3,000 KM. In addition to all the problems that are on our heads, we now have more expensive registration, so let them ask themselves why carriers are fleeing Bosnia and Herzegovina and registering companies in Slovenia – says Grbić.
The coordinator of the BiH Logistics Consortium, Velibor Peulić, sees the reasons for the increase in fees in road maintenance costs in a situation where the length of the road network remains the same, and the number of active payers in the system decreases or stagnates, especially in the road transport sector.
– This means that the same maintenance cost must be distributed to a smaller number of participants. As a result, there is an increase in individual allocations and an increase in registration prices – says Peulić.
Also built into the fuel
He reminds that the costs of vehicle registration in Bosnia and Herzegovina consist of the price of the insurance policy, technical inspection, road fees, taxes, administrative fees and environmental fees.
– Tolls are additionally charged through the price of fuel, in BiH as much as 0.40 KM per liter goes to roads and highways. This means that users of the infrastructure participate in its financing multiple times – through registration, but also through daily fuel consumption – adds Peulić.
According to the available data, almost 1.29 million vehicles are registered in Bosnia and Herzegovina, of which approximately 778,000 are in the FBiH, 476,000 in the RS, and about 41,000 in the Brčko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is estimated that revenues from road fees, which are collected through vehicle registration in BiH, amount to more than 200 million KM.
Unintended consumption
The biggest problem, according to the assessment of economic analyst Igor Gavran, is that even the amount collected so far through registrations is clearly not being spent as intended, because neither the construction nor the maintenance of roads are at the required level. It is certain that even the increased fees will not be spent on purpose.
– In the FBiH, these costs are even now higher than in the RS due to the more expensive technical inspection, but the expenditure of money is equally questionable. The problem of most fees, including basic taxes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in addition to the cost and burden on citizens and the economy, is the unintended spending, and all this has an additional negative effect at a time of rising fuel prices and the total cost of using motor vehicles – says Gavran, writes Black Chronicle.
