Postal Savings Bank of China provides loan for Belgrade Underground Parking Lot Construction Project

On July 3, 2019, China Shandong International Economic and Technical Cooperation Corporation signed an agreement with the city of Belgrade for the construction of public underground garages. Then, on November 9, 2020, China Shandong International Economic and Technical Cooperation Corporation signed a loan agreement with the Jinan Branch of the Postal Savings Branch of China for the Belgrade Underground Parking Lot Construction Project. The project is reportedly the first Chinese public-private partnership (PPP) project in Europe. China Shandong International Economic and Technical Cooperation Corporation was granted a 40-year concession to manage the parking garages. Shandong's bid was EUR 5,800,171.31 and a construction time of 570 days. The parking garages are located on Student Square, Republic Square, Fruškogorska Street, and Vlajkovićeva street (Studentskom trgu, Trgu republike, Fruškogorskoj ulici, Vlajkovićevoj ulici in Serbian). There will be about 3,000 parking spaces between the four garages. The garages have been criticized for being too close to the monument "Building of the National Assembly" and the "Ancient Singidunum" archeological site. The project is also expected to result in the destruction of a park. The construction of the garage on Vlajkoviceva Street was originally scheduled to begin in September 2021 and a contractor was already selected in 2022 (a Chinese construction company known as Shandong Luqiao). The construction of the other garage -- the one on Fruskogorska Street -- was originally scheduled to begin December 2021. The construction of the garage in Vlajkoviceva Street was originally expected to take 15 months to build and the construction of the one in Fruskogorska Street was originally expected to take 18 months to build.

Additional details

1. The Chinese project title is 贝尔格莱德地下停车场项目. 2. The precise face value and borrowing terms of the loan are unknown. Multiple sources cite "around EUR 50 million" as the total amount of investment, but it seems unlikely that the loan was issued in EUR. This issue warrants further investigation. 3. It is unclear when the implementation start date was. Bids for some underground parking garages were announced in September of 2020 (see "塞尔维亚贝尔格莱德市Vlajkoviceva地下停车场项目EPC总承包招标中标候选人公示"). However, China Shandong definitely signed an agreement relating to this project with the Government of the City of Belgrade in June 2019 (see "Potpisan ugovor o izgradnji četiri podzemne garaže u Beogradu"). It is therefore hard to say when construction actually began. It does not seem to have been completed as of July 2022. 4. A Serbian project name is currently unavailable. The names of the streets are in Serbian in the Latin alphabet, but searching in Cyrillic is usually more effective. 5. The Jinan Branch of the China Postal Savings Bank (中国邮政储蓄银行股份有限公司济南市阳光新路支行因机构名) recently changed its name to Postal Savings Bank of China Co., Ltd. Jinan Shizhong District Sub-branch (中国邮政储蓄银行股份有限公司济南市市中区支行) but sources for this project use the older name.

Number of official sources

2

Number of total sources

8