The Chamber of Economy of the Federation of BiH informs economic entities from the textile and leather processing industry sector that at the 57th session of the Government of the Federation of BiH, held on 25.06.2025, the Action Plan 2025-2027 for the implementation of the Strategy for the Development of the Textile, Clothing, Leather and Footwear Industry in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the period 2024-2033 was adopted.
By the Decree on the Promulgation of the Decision on the Adoption of the Strategy and the Decision on the Adoption of the Strategy published in the Official Gazette of the Federation of BiH, no. 20/25 of 19.03.2025, and the Conclusion of the Government of FBiH on the acceptance of the Strategy, no. 1910/2024 of 11.12.2024, the Federal Ministry of Energy, Mining and Industry was tasked to prepare, within 60 days from the date of adoption of the Decision on the Adoption of the Strategy by the Parliament of FBiH, a Draft Action Plan for its implementation and submit it to the Government of FBiH for adoption. The Working Group for the preparation of the Draft Action Plan for the implementation of the Strategy, consisting of representatives of FMERI, P/GKFBiH and UNDP, prepared the Draft AP SITOKO and submitted it to the Government of the Federation of BiH within the defined deadline for adoption.
Given that the Strategy, in the part relating to the Long-term view of the implementation of the Strategy, envisages several steps for its implementation, the working group proposed that this Action Plan cover a three-year period from 2025 to 2027. This would realize the step of “Initiation” and lay the foundations for the step of “Reassessment and recalibration”.
The textile, clothing, leather and footwear industry (ITOKO) is in constant transformation. ITOKO has gone from being one of the largest employers to being smaller in overall volume and in the size of producers. A large part of this production has moved to areas with lower wages and lower production costs, while the way of selling and the speed of product development are under the strong influence of innovations in sales, materials and consumer preferences. The Strategy dictates that ITOKO must transform towards a circular economy and become a fast and sustainable branch of the economy in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH). The Strategy helps, and even requires, ITOKO to invest in knowledge, creativity, innovation, digitalization of industrial and market processes, thereby supporting its competitiveness.
The development of ITOKO in FBiH requires a combination of policies and measures brought by current and future strategies and policies in FBiH. In order to achieve a good result of this Strategy, it is necessary to ensure alignment between industrial policy priorities, an appropriate distribution of the costs of strategy implementation between the public and private sectors, and the establishment of a critical perspective – policy evaluation and adaptation of the strategy to the development of the situation and the impact of the strategy. The optimal combination of policies that will maximize the impact of public and private investments is based on assessing needs and plans for achieving goals through sets of priorities and measures within one objective.
The implementation of the strategy is envisioned in 5 major steps. Each of these steps requires great implementation capacity from all involved, as well as strong policy motivation for the success of the industry.
Step A: INITIATION (years 0-3) The first step in implementing the strategy is the development of partnerships that will initiate cooperation between actors in the industry, in the fields of research, education and development, policy and users of products and services, and initiate cross-sectoral cooperation. This step will provide the first results and assessments of how to implement the strategy, what the priority development directions are and how to achieve the vision of industry development. The interest of public policy should be to build a strong industrial base in FBiH, which in the long term requires larger and focused investments, and on the other hand conditions must be created for greater public and private investments in industrial development. In order to be able to properly monitor industrial development, carry out larger investments from the budget and maintain partnerships, it is necessary to prepare and launch a plan for capacity building in public bodies and the private sector, so that together they can support the strengthening of industry through various tools that will be developed in FBiH. It is also necessary in the first step to launch programs for the development of knowledge, skills and human resources that will support the creation of the results of this strategy within all partners.
The Chamber of Economy of the Federation of BiH invites all key stakeholders: companies, relevant institutions, donor organizations to cooperate, and to include in their future policies the goals and priority measures that will contribute to the successful implementation of the Strategy and thus improve the situation within this industrial branch.
