Chinese Government pledges EUR 600 million loan for the overhaul of the Belgrade-Nis railway line (Linked to Project ID#67195)

Between July 6-7 of 2018, the governments of China and Serbia signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) for the overhaul of the 198 km Belgrade-Nis railway line. The reconstruction of the railway line will cost approximately €600 million EUR ($706.4 million USD). This project is part one of a larger project to extend the same railway line to the North Macedonian border (the completed project will be the Belgrade – Niš – Preševo railway line; the second part of which is recorded in the linked project ID#67195). Serbian state-owned company Infrastruktura Zeleznice Srbije signed the China Road & Bridge Corporation on to the project as a contractor. The total value of the project is estimated at EUR 760 million, of which, for Belgrade-Niš railway line, the modernization of 198 km is estimated at EUR 600 million (recorded in this project), while the 88-km Niš – Presevo section, is estimated at EUR 160 million (recorded in project ID #67195). In May 2019, Serbian Minister of Infrastructure, Zorana Mihajlović, the director general of Serbian Railways Infrastructure, Miroljub Jevtić, and the general manager of China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC), Lu Shan, signed a contract for the reconstruction of Belgrade – Niš – Preševo line on Corridor 10. The contract signed defines the next steps of Belgrade – Niš – Preševo modernization project, which implies the joint preparation of a technical and economic study for the development of the railway Corridor 10, the design and execution of works on the construction of a new double-track railway on Belgrade-Velika Plana route for mixed traffic. This will allow trains to run at speeds up to 160 km/h. In March 2021, the Belgrade-Nis stretch of the route was scheduled to be completed by early 2023. In April 2021, Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic announced that the European Union (EU) was ready to provide a grant of at least 600 million euro ($725 million) for the construction of a high-speed railway line linking Belgrade to North Macedonia through Nis. He stated that this EU offer for the project is much more attractive than what China and CRBC has proposed. In October 2020, Vucic said that Serbia had asked the EU for a grant covering 50% of the project cost, and that it would go with China if the EU declined to help finance the project. As such, the current status of the project, and whether financing is coming from China or the EU, is unclear. The Belgrade-Presevo railway line is part of Corridor X, or Corridor 10, which will facilitate the traffic of goods from Greece's Piraeus port to Central Europe. Corridor X will connect Salzburg in Austria to the Greek Aegean port of Thessaloniki, passing through Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and North Macedonia.

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