Breweries from Bosnia and Herzegovina ask for introduction of duties on imported beer - Serbian manufacturers endangered

Breweries in Bosnia and Herzegovina are trying to mediate introduction of duties on imported beer that makes 70% of the market in that country, and it mainly comes from Serbia and Croatia. The breweries have decided to make that move in order to protect domestic production, which dropped by 5-8% in 2009.

Breweries started protecting domestic production 2.5 years ago. The information on production, sales, exploitation of capacities, should have proved that local beer market was really endangered by import, and that the balance between export and import was violated. The procedure was done according to precise instructions and requests from the CEFTA free trade agreement.

- Domestic breweries are using 30-40% of their capacities, and they would be able to cover the whole local market with their production. Annual capacity of five breweries in Bosnia and Herzegovina amounts to about 2.5m hectoliters of beer, which is enough to satisfy the needs of the whole market, but we produce only about 1m hectoliters of beer because of the import - said Nazif Branković, the CEO of the Sarajevo Brewer.

People in the Ministry of Foreign Trade of Bosnia and Herzegovina say that they do everything that is necessary, and that they "hope to finally get all the asked information from the institutions and authorized ministries of the entities, as well as from the Administration for Indirect Taxation, in order to go on with the procedure".