Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure, Zorana Mihajlovic, visited today with her associates railway section Beograd Center – Stara Pazova, where construction works on High speed railway line from Belgrade to Budapest are being conducted, and announced that the works will be finished by the autumn 2021 and that people will travel from Belgrade to Novi Sad within a half an hour.

“Construction of the high speed railway line is the most important infrastructure project in South-Eastern Europe and the value of the construction works on the territory of the Republic of Serbia and Hungary is up to €4 billion, where almost €2 billion is for the Serbian territory,” said Deputy Prime Minister.

“This railway line is important not only because it will take half an hour from Belgrade to Novi Sad, but also because with this project, Serbia has joined the global Chinese initiative “One Belt, One Road”, as one of the first countries that has signed a memorandum with People’s Republic of China on this project,” Mihajlovic said.

On the first part of the section Belgrade Center – Stara Pazova, from Belgrade Center Station to Zemun about 40 percents of the works have been finished, and from December all work is going to be performed simultaneously on each part of the section.

“Thanks to Chinese and Serbian Railways the work is carried out 24 hours a day to meet deadlines, and it is especially important that all the work is going to be carried out according to European standards, which is being controlled by the notification body,” said Mihajlovic, adding that by the end of 2021 a new bus station in New Belgrade would also be completed.

She emphasized that works on the section from Stara Pazova to Novi Sad are being carried out within the agreed deadlines, and that a commercial and financial contract has been signed for the section from Novi Sad to Subotica, and that the works are expected to begin in February or March 2020. “The entire express railway line on the territory of Serbia should be completed in 2022 or 2023, and almost at the same time works on the territory of Hungary should be completed too,” she added.

Acting Director-General of “Infrastructure of Serbian Railways”, Miroljub Jeftic, said that works are being carried out at several locations on this section, that all material that is going to be used for railway construction have been certified and that special attention is going to be paid to traffic safety, where latest technical systems are used.

The CEO of China Railway International, Xiaoyong Hu, said that thanks to the support of Deputy Prime Minister, Ministry of Construction and the Ambassador of PR China to Serbia, H.E. Chen Bo, the contractor was able to make significant progress in all segments of the project. “Procurement of equipment and material is done in order to achieve all requirements regarding quality and interoperability” he said.

Belgrade Center – Stara Pazova railway is 34.5 kilometers long and is part of the project for the construction of a high-speed railway line up to 200 kilometers per hour between Belgrade and Budapest.
The contractor is a Chinese consortium of “China Railway International” and “China Communications Construction Company”, and the contract value for this railway section is $ 350.1 million.