BiH more efficient than Croatia and Serbia in the Wood Sector

Wood sector of BiH is making larger profit than the wood sector of Croatia and Serbia.

Benchmark report for 2012, presented by the Association for Business Counselling in BiH, showed that the BiH wood sector companies make more than 70% of overall income and have larger profit per employee in comparison to companies from Croatia and Serbia.

The aforementioned association published a benchmark report for 2012 on success of BIH, Croatian and Serbian companies in three key sectors of BIH economy- food, wood and metal industry.

President of the association Fuad Strik said that it is a simple, but very precise report.

- Based on a sample of 300 companies from every industry, with 100 from each country, we have taken directly their financial balance, therefore the results of operations. Then we compared the trends of the benchmark. The food sector is not so good in comparison to Croatia and Serbia. What is surprising is that the metal sector is not so good, at least not as much as we thought. The positive thing is the wood sector is better in BIH than in two neighbouring countries .We are incomparably more effective, we have higher profit per employee than neighbouring countries and, most importantly, our companies generate more than 70 percent of total export revenues. If we’d focus more on that sector, we would probably have had better results – said Strik.

Professor at the Economy Faculty in Sarajevo Fikret Hadžić said that food industry results are not that bad, and that in certain aspects of it BiH has better performance than neighbouring countries.

‘Our net margin is much smaller in comparison to Croatia and in Serbia it’s negative. When last year we did the analysis with respect to the medium and small enterprises from Germany and the Czech Republic, the results were actually negative for BiH. And in this case, we find that there has been a growth in imports in the food industry in the period since 2007 and 2012 year- This growth is about 15 percent. On the other hand, our exports in the food industry increased by somewhere around 60 percent. Food sector employs about 19 000 workers, and therefore, together with the agricultural sector, it may be a good development potential for the overall economy of Bosnia and Herzegovina – said Hadzic.

He pointed out that these analyses can also be used by potential investors, who, on that basis, can evaluate and compare the situations in aforementioned countries. Hadžić said that Croatian companies could move to BiH because of the better environment, especially in the food sector.

-With tightening of conditions we expect that some companies will move here. In this sense, it should activate the concept of development of industrial zones, so that potential sources could find a place for themselves in our market – explained Hadžić.

Source: sarajevotimes.com