The authorities in the Croat-Bosniak Federation in Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) on Thursday proposed suspending value added tax (VAT) on gas supplies, in a bid to ease the impact of soaring prices for households.

In Bosnia gas prices have already soared by 60 percent since early 2022.

The government of FBiH, which makes up half of the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the other half being the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS) said they would propose a six-month suspension of the 17-percent VAT on natural gas supply to the country-level government.

The FBiH government, which held a meeting on Thursday, said that soaring energy bills had impacted households. In FBiH gas is supplied by Russia’s Gazprom, through the so-called TurkStream pipeline.

In early 2022, the price of gas went up by 14.9 percent, and since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February this year, the price jumped even more, by 21.7 percent in April and by 23.2 percent in July.