Skip to main content

Chinese firms to work on Serbia’s Corridor 11 project

Serbia and China have signed a memorandum of understanding for construction of two sections of Serbia’s Corridor 11. The MoU was inked in during Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic’s visit to the Chinese capital Beijing last week. Serbia’s Tanjug news agency reported that Vucic said the deal was worth around €209 million and included construction of the 18km Surcin-Obrenovac bridge. Corridor 11 runs from the Serbian capital Belgrade southwest to the border with Montenegro, another member state of
November 30, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
Serbia and China have signed a memorandum of understanding for construction of two sections of Serbia’s Corridor 11.

The MoU was inked in during Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic’s visit to the Chinese capital Beijing last week.

Serbia’s Tanjug news agency reported that Vucic said the deal was worth around €209 million and included construction of the 18km Surcin-Obrenovac bridge. Corridor 11 runs from the Serbian capital Belgrade southwest to the border with Montenegro, another member state of the former Yugoslavia that dissolved after a brutal war in the late 1990s.
 
Vucic told Serbia's state broadcaster RTS that the arrangement with China was "a very favourable credit arrangement with a lengthy grace period" that was based on a “dramatically” lower construction cost.

The prime minister added he believed that the second section, from Cacak to Pozega, would be finished by the end of 2018 - connecting with Uzice in western Serbia, and extending farther toward Montenegro.

Earlier this year, Serbian vice president Zorana Mihajlovic said that the Corridor 10 motorway is expected to be completed by the end of 2016 and that sufficient funding has been secured. She noted that in the past year, 58km of the motorway was been paved and another 120km is expected to be paved this year. Greek company Terna is the contractor.

Corridor 10 is one of the most important pan-European transport corridors that runs through Serbia to connect Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Greece. The goal is to create a transport system within Serbia that will be compatible with that of the European Union.

Meanwhile, Serbian news website B92 reported last week that the prime minister of Montenegro said China will invest in two major road projects. Milo Dukanovic, said China Roads and Bridges Corporation and the China Communications and Construction Company will work on the Bar-Serbian border motorway project. The first part will be financed with an €800 million loan from the Chinese State Bank.

Related Content

  • Serbia sets a highway challenge
    January 30, 2023
    Serbia is setting itself a highway construction challenge.
  • Bechtel Enka opens first section of Pristina-Skopje motorway
    October 29, 2015
    The first part of the €600 million Arber Dzaferi motorway between Pristina, the capital of Kosovo and Skopje in Macedonia, has opened to traffic. US-Turkish consortium Bechtel Enka is contractor for the 60km road that will eventually link Pristina, capital of the former Serbian province Kosovo, and the city of Skopje, capital of Macedonia, a former Yugoslav republic. The road - numerically Route 6 – is Kosovo’s second motorway and is named after the prominent Albanian intellectual and politician from
  • Koridori Srbije signs Corridor 11 motorway deal with Shandong HSG
    May 16, 2013
    Serbian Minister of Infrastructure, Velimir Ilic, and the director of the roads company Koridori Srbije, Dmitar Durovic, say they have signed a contract agreement with the Chinese company Shandong High Speed Group, for construction of the Corridor 11 motorway, worth a total of €257.23 million (US$ 334mn). The contract has been signed by Zhu Wei, deputy director of the Chinese company, for construction of the Ljig-Preljina part of 50km. Meanwhile, a new tender is due to be called soon for construction of the
  • Highway developments to boost east-west transport
    April 4, 2012
    Huge highway developments are being planned and carried out to further improve East-West transport, with Central Asia a key region as Patrick Smith reports History was made in late 2010, when one of the biggest road building projects ever envisaged in Eastern Europe was given the green-light. It was the occasion when Russian president Dmitry Medvedev signed a law that would allow his country to build its segment of a huge highway around the Black Sea. The idea is to complete the 7,140km highway, wi