BELGRADE (Serbia), March 21 (SeeNews) – The Export-Import Bank of China (EXIM Bank) considers Serbia to be its main partner in the framework of the cooperation mechanism between China and 16 Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC), the Serbian infrastructure ministry said.
Serbia is a country of special importance for China in the Balkans and the largest beneficiary of loans among the so-called preferential customers within the CEEC mechanism, with a share of more than 50%, representatives of the Chinese bank have said, according to a statement issued by the infrastructure ministry on Tuesday.
A delegation of EXIM Bank has arrived in Serbia to verify the quality of construction works carried out with its support and to start talks on new infrastructure projects, the bank's supervisory board chairman, Yu Xuejun, said in the statement.
"All projects have been very successful," Xuejun said.
The Serbian government signed a commercial agreement with EXIM Bank for the construction of a motorway connecting Preljina to Pozega in December 2017 and expects to sign a contract for the overhaul of the Novi Sad-Subotica section of the railway line connecting Belgrade to Hungary's capital Budapest in the short term, Serbia's infrastructure minister Zorana Mihajlovic noted in the statement.
In November 2016, the Serbian infrastructure ministry said the government signed several commercial and financing deals with China worth a combined 734 million euro ($901.4 million) for infrastructure works. The deals were signed on the sidelines of the Riga summit of the heads of government of China and 16 CEE countries, or the 16+1 format.
($ = 0.814184 euro)