Sarajevo, Aug 16 - Bosnia's millers urged the government on Thursday to import 50,000 tonnes of wheat and scrap a 6.0 percent import tax in order to keep the industry going and halt a surge in bread and other staple food prices.
Bread prices have already gone up and millers plan to hike the price of flour. Trade unions have warned that surging prices could add to popular discontent and lead to social unrest.
"We need to urgently import 50,000 tonnes of wheat for the next quarter of this year so that Bosnia has the basic raw material for bread production," said Miroslav Cosic, the milling industry representative from the northern district of Brcko.
The wheat import tax must be scrapped, he added.
Bosnia needs some 400,000 tonnes of wheat a year and domestic output covers only 20 percent of its annual needs.
Its traditional suppliers -- Serbia and Croatia -- have banned exports and are considering imposing export taxes.
Bosnia's two autonomous regions, the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic, have stocks to cover only one month of shortages. The authorities have bought no wheat to boost the reserves at the time of surging global prices.
Ibrahim Tirak, the chief inspector in the Muslim-Croat federation, said emergency wheat imports and the lifting of an import tax were likely, but so were price caps for bread.
The price of bread, the nation's staple food, rose this week by 50 percent in Brcko and 30 percent in other towns.
"We will take measures against the raging (bread) prices," Tirak told a news conference. But he gave no other detail.
Trade union officials said the milling industry, working at 50 percent of capacity, would have to hike prices and this could lead to social unrest.
"Unless the milling industry raises the prices, it would be destroyed," said Mehmed Avdagic, the chairman of the agriculture and food producers trade union.
"This is an attack on the standard of living that will deepen poverty and trigger protests," he added.
The farming sector and the food processing industry have faced neglect in a country still reeling from the 1992-95 war.
Bosnia has no agriculture ministry at state level. Regional governments allocate minor parts of their budgets for the sector and hardly grant any subsidies to farmers.