“I don’t know if those who made the
revenue projections for this year actually had in mind that in 2012 we lost as
much as BAM50 million due to the abolition of customs duties on imports of
products from the EU and that customs duty revenues will be even smaller in
2013,” Džakula said in an interview with Srna.
He assesses that it would be better to
make a realistic revenue projection for this year, on the basis of real
economic indicators, which are negative – in order to avoid the need to revise
too ambitious projections and cut them down several times a year.
Džakula claims that at this point
there are no final results on the revenues for the whole of 2012, saying that
several days before the year’s end the collected gross revenues totalled BAM
5.862 billion.
Taxpayers received BAM 885 million in
tax refund and net revenues distributed to the beneficiaries amounted to BAM
4.997 billion.
The major part of collected indirect
tax revenues are value-added tax revenues totalling BAM 3.697 billion, up by
1.5 percent in relation to the same period in 2011.
These are followed by excise tax or
special tax revenues of BAM 1.195 billion in the first 11 months of 2012, and
customs duty proceeds fell owing to the application of the trade part of the
Stabilisation and Association Agreement between BiH and the EU and the fact
that those proceeds reached BAM 208 million in the observed period.
“Last year we intensified our control
regarding VAT refund applications and tax credit applications. The result of
those activities was keeping the VAT refund amounts at the level of the
previous year’s and a discovery of several cases of unlawful applications for
VAT refund, of which we notified the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH,” said Mr
Džakula.
ITA’s priorities this year will be
stricter and more thorough checks of VAT refund applications, he said.
Commenting on the fact that Croatia is
joining the EU soon, the ITA Director said that it was planned to allow entry
of goods requiring special supervision by inspection, such as veterinary
certificates and phytosanitary certificates for the goods of plant and animal
origin, at only two border crossings (the so-called BIPs – Border Inspection
Posts).
According to Džakula, those are the
border crossings at Gradiška in the north and Bijača in the south.
Džakula also said that it was agreed
in the recent meeting in Brussels that the goods entering BiH and the goods
leaving BiH through the Port of Ploče should be treated the same as the
Croatian goods that would be passing through Neum.
“A trilateral ministerial meeting
between BiH, Croatia and the EU will take place in February and after that we
can expect the signing of the final Agreement on Border Crossings and
Cross-Border Trade, once the BiH-Croatia border becomes and EU border,” said
Džakula.
Since taking office as the Director of
ITA, Mr Džakula signed more than 200 decisions to launch disciplinary
proceedings against ITA officers for whom there were reasonable grounds to
suspect that they had committed serious or minor abuse of office.
(Srna/Frontal)
