The Economic Pulse of Bosnia and Herzegovina – UNDP’S platform for business data, economic recovery measures and the voice of the private sector

Data is the foundation of decision-making and raw material for accountability.

Without high-quality data providing the right information on the right things at the right time designing effective policies becomes almost impossible.

Data on the socio-economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bosnia and Herzegovina, including the state of the private sector, is often unreliable, not easily accessible and fragmented across multiple international, regional and local sources. When available, data are often presented in a long-winded way that is time-consuming to read, which discourages users from engaging in informed public debate and conducting fact-based analysis and makes it difficult for decision makers to assess the true weight of information.

Improved access to data and data analysis with visualization could tremendously contribute to the understanding of the socio-economic impact of the pandemic in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and resulting formulation of key findings and recovery measures that are evidence-based, addressing the real needs of the affected businesses community in the country.

How is UNDP measuring the economic pulse?

To promote an informed policymaking the UNDP Country Office in Bosnia and Herzegovina has engaged in creating a web-based open data dashboard named “Economic Pulse of Bosnia and Herzegovina”. Guided by the need to support evidence-based solutions to the economic downfall and the use of disaggregated data, the Economic Pulse dashboard will be a data repository and knowledge platform that offers timely and high-quality information on several aspects of the state of the country’s economy during and post-crisis.

Basic functionalities of the platform:

• Key economic indicators presented in an interactive way;
• A filterable register of all economic response and recovery that have been adopted at different administrative levels in BiH;
• A space for public consultation and co-creation of measures between the private sector, citizens and governments.

As a first step in measuring the Pulse, we reached out to over 14,000 domestic companies with a request to fill out a survey aimed at assessing the impact of the crisis causing the pandemic on their business. Our 28 questions were answered by 1,022 companies from all over the country and various industries during ten days in April 2020. The survey will have at least two more iterations to follow economic trends and feed new data in the Economic Pulse dashboard.

Next steps involve a detailed economic analysis of data collected through the first survey, making data available through the Economic Pulse web dashboard and continues data collection and analysis to support the economic recovery efforts.

The Economic Pulse, overview of data (BCS)