Russia lending 230 mln euro to Serbia for railway overhaul projects

The loan will be used to finance the overhaul of sections with a total length of 209.8 km of the railway line linking Belgrade to the border with Montenegro, the construction of power infrastructure at the Stara Pazova-Novi Sad stretch of the Belgrade-Budapest railway, as well as the creation of an Integrated Traffic Control Center for managing train traffic, the infrastructure ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

The projects' value totals 230 million euro, with the Serbian government planning to provide co-financing worth 57.5 million euro.

"Together with Russian Railways, we have reconstructed the 77.6 km-long Resnik-Valjevo section, and by modernising the entire line through Serbia we will make the speed of trains at 100 km/h all the way to the border with Montenegro," infrastructure minister Zorana Mihajlovic said in the statement.

Russian railway infrastructure engineering company RZD International completed the overhaul of the Resnik-Valjevo section in November 2018. A total of $79.9 million was invested in the project.

($ = 0.89558 euro)