The House of Representatives of the BiH Parliamentary Assembly has confirmed the appointment of Zoran Tegeltija for chairman of the Council of Ministers.
Twenty-eight MPs voted in favour, eight against, while two abstained from voting.
Zoran Tegeltija was born in 1961 in Mrkonjić Grad and holds a doctoral degree in economics.
He used to work for the Oil Refinery in Brod, Public Revenues Authority of BiH, Public Revenues Authority of Republika Srpska, and Customs Administration of Republika Srpska.
He is a member of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats /SNSD/ and was a member of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska from 2000 until 2002. He was elected mayor of Mrkonjić Grad in 2004 and in 2008.
He was minister of finance of Republika Srpska in two terms, from 2010 until 2018. In the last year’s general elections in BiH he was elected a member of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska.
The newly appointed Chairman of the BiH Council of Ministers Zoran Tegeltija has confirmed he will begin consultations about the composition of the Council on Friday and voiced hope that the new Council will be elected by the New Year’s.
He stated at a press conference that consultations would begin at 11.00 a.m. and resume on Monday, December 9.
“I hope to carry out the necessary consultations by mid-next week and expect the parties to submit their proposals for candidates because it takes a certain amount of time to do all the checks,” Tegeltija said.
Tegeltija asserted that it would be possible to appoint all ministers and deputy ministers in a relatively short period of time if there were a sufficient amount of agreement and added that within the political parties, the names of the candidates for ministers and their deputies were already known.
“Principles of the leaders of the parties making up the backbone of parliamentary majority, which supported me and which will make up the Council of Ministers, have been signed. An annex to the principles defines the ministries and ministerial and deputy ministerial positions that belong to individual political parties,” said Tegeltija.
He voiced hope that, despite vetting procedures for candidates for ministers and deputy ministers and the upcoming holidays, there would be enough time for the new BiH Council of Ministers to be elected by the New Year’s.
“As far as I have been informed, two framework dates have been defined for the parliament’s operations by the end of the year, and those are December 18 and 23. As far as I’m concerned, I will be ready for any of those meetings,” said Tegeltija.
As regards the Reform Programme adopted by the BiH Presidency, Tegeltija stated that he had clearly said it was a document that would form the basis for cooperation with NATO.
“It is exactly the body competent for the issue, the BiH Presidency, that adopted the document and I expect it to be sent to the NATO headquarters. It is exactly why I said that the document would be a framework for BiH’s cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation,” Tegeltija said.
He recalled that he had clearly pointed out in his address to parliamentarians that he was going to respect the BiH Constitution and constitutional competences of all institutions, noting that the role and competences of the BIH Presidency, and the relationship between the Presidency and the Council of Ministers were clearly defined.
“I said it would be a basis for cooperation because we are obliged to execute adopted documents defining the issue of foreign affairs and defence which is the competence of the BiH Presidency,” he explained.
When it comes to the published property records, Tegletija points out that his income was public and available over the past four years and that all indicators presented cpuld be checked.
Discussing the VAT Law, Tegeltija recalled that the piece of legislation was being developed for two years already and that the preliminary draft of the law was adopted by the Governing Board of the Indirect Taxation Authority /ITA/.
“The law was also submitted to the finance committees of entity and BiH parliaments because it is stipulated by law. It is a law that has to appear in parliamentary procedure via the ITA Governing Board,” he said.
He added that the contents of the law for the most part entailed approximation of certain technical issues with directives and that the proposed text made no mention of changing the VAT rate.
“The document that exists today was defined in the Reform Agenda 2015-2018,” stated Tegeltija and explained that today there was no agreement among political parties in the Federation of BiH about changing the VAT rate.
Source: srna
