MAKROEKONOMSKI POKAZATELJI U BIH – TRENDOVI U SVJETLU ZAMKE SREDNJEG DOHOTKA

Abstract

The period of macroeconomic stability in Bosnia and Herzegovina brought notable economic achievements. Bosnia and Herzegovina progressed from a low-income country in 1999 to an upper-middle-income country in 2010, with a gross national income (GNI) per capita of over 4,000 USD. If the growth rate of GNI per capita continued to move in line with the average for the past twenty years, the country could reach the status of a country with a high level of income in the next 16-17 years. Changes in employment were accompanied by a transition from agriculture to industry and services, which emphasizes the transformative process in the economy. Furthermore, the cautious fiscal policy since 2014 has led to a relatively low ratio of public debt at the level of BiH, of about 30 percent of GDP, despite significant spending by entity governments aimed at supporting companies and households in the period that followed the pandemic in 2020 and inflationary shocks in 2022.Despite the mentioned achievements, BiH’s convergence towards the EU is proceeding slowly. The real growth of GDP per capita in BiH exceeded the growth in comparable countries from the region (Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia), but mainly due to the decrease in the number of inhabitants, which is the result of a significant rate of migration, and not due to higher GDP growth rates. The trend of economic growth in Bosnia and Herzegovina has stagnated in the last 15 years. BiH’s already long stagnation in the group of middle-income countries suggests that it too has potentially fallen into the middle-income trap. Therefore, following the trends of macroeconomic indicators, we will try to determine whether Bosnia and Herzegovina is in a middle-income trap.