June 7 (SeeNews) - Bosnia's Serb Republic is intensively working on developing its road infrastructure, aiming to operate a motorway network of 420 kilometres by 2030, local media reported, quoting the Republic's transport minister.
The Serb Republic's current priority is to link its main city Banja Luka with the Serbian capital Belgrade, news agency Srna quoted Nedjo Trninic as telling a conference in Belgrade on Wednesday.
"We already have a connection between Banja Luka and Doboj [also in the Serb Republic] and next week we begin the construction of Corridor Vc, with contractors starting work on phase one and two," Trninic said, adding phase three and four to Vukosavlje will follow.
Corridor Vc connects the port of Ploce in Croatia with Budapest in Hungary via Bosnia and Herzegovina. Banja Luka is lying west of the corridor but will connect to it via the road to Doboj. The planned Doboj-Vukosavlje motorway section lies on the corridor's route.
The Republic is one of two entities that make up Bosnia and Herzegovina. The other is the Federation. The best part of the Corridor Vc section in Bosnia lies in the Federation.
In March, the Republic's motorway operator Autoputevi RS signed a deal with a consortium of local firm Integral Inzenjering and Skopje-based Granit for the construction of the first phase of Corridor Vc's 47-km section on the Serb Republic's territory.
Last year, the Serb Republic completed a 402 million euro ($453 million) project for the construction of the 72 km-long Banja Luka-Doboj motorway.
This is the second active motorway in the Republic, apart from the 32-km Banja Luka-Bosanska Gradiska motorway, which links the Serb Republic's main city with the Croatian border in the north. With it the current active network operated by Autoputevi RS increased to some 100 kilometres of high-speed roads.
In Belgrade, Trnicic also expressed hope that the foundation stone on a planned Sava river bridge on the border with Serbia could be laid in the summer.
In January, Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic said Serbia plans to invest 100 million euro in the construction of the bridge. The bridge is part of a project for the construction of a motorway linking Serbia's Belgrade with Bosnian capital Sarajevo.
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