March 22 (SeeNews) - Serbia's government said the European Investment Bank (EIB) has expressed interest in providing financing for the construction of a railway bypass around the city of Nis, in eastern Serbia.
There is a possibility for Serbia to get non-repayable funds for the construction of the Nis railway bypass, which has a total value of around 87 million euro ($93.9 million), the head of the EIB Regional Representation for the Western Balkans, Dubravka Negre said, as quoted in a statement by the government on Tuesday.
Negre and Serbia's infrastructure minister Zorana Mihajlovic met on Tuesday to discuss the development of railway projects in Serbia with a total value of around 230 million euro, the government said.
Mihajlovic also presented the development of the 84.4 million euro project for the reconstruction of the Sicevo-Dimitrovgrad railway line, co-financed by the EIB, and the 59 million euro project for the electrification of the Nis-Dimitrovgrad railway stretch of Corridor X.
Nis is surrounded by a triangular network of railway lines constructed when the city was much smaller, which causes congestion and low speeds. With the construction of the bypass around the city, the government aims to improve the efficiency of transport, reduce traffic congestion and move freight traffic out of the city centre.
In 2013, Serbia's government signed a 942,695 euro contract with a consortium of Serbia's COWI, Italy's NET Engineering and Czech Republic's Sudop Praha for the preparation of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), a feasibility study and a general design of the railway bypass.
($ = 0.9268 euro)