Experts:		Małgorzata Markiewicz Mirosław Gronicki John Wright Karoly Soos
Country studied:		Bosnia and Herzegovina
Sponsor:		European Commission, EuropeAID: CARDS
Partners:		Hulla & Co. Human Dynamics (consortium leader) DIW - German Institute for Economic Research

Description:

The Stabilization and Association process requires that Bosnia and Herzegovina improve, inter alia, macro-economic stability and fiscal sustainability and enhance related legal, institutional and administrative structures. The EC prepared a proposal for a Council Decision on the Principles, Priorities and Conditions contained in the European Partnership with BiH. The project attempted to ehance the administrative, economic, fiscal and statistics capacities of the BiH government to fulfill the economic and fiscal short- and medium-term priorities for the country's preparation for further integration with the EU.

This objective was accomplished by:

• facilitating the process of fiscal policy formulation in the GB of ITA/FC
• enhancing the quality of the beneficiary's policy recommendations and thus its authority
• building the capacity of MAU/GB and FC economists and policy advisors
• supporting the build-up of functioning cooperation between the relevant institutions
• developing coherent fiscal data reporting
• awareness raising activities for fiscal developments (publications, website)
• identification of equipment needs for linking the GB/FC and the three finance ministries

The most important results of this project were:

• the improvement  of macro-economic and fiscal policy advice to the government of BiH
• the development of a centralised economic policy coordination and its institutional set-up
• the availability of well-trained economists in the MAU of the GB/FC