BELGRADE (Serbia), August 6 (SeeNews) – Serbia's government expects motorway toll revenue to decline by about 20% in 2020, due to the decrease in traffic caused by the coronavirus crisis, infrastructure minister Zorana Mihajlovic said on Thursday.
"Our estimates are that this year revenues from toll collection will be around 40 million euro ($47.4 million) to 45 million euro less than planned. By August 3, we had about 5.4 million fewer vehicles than last year, but the drop in revenue is 3.5% or about 500 million dinars," Mihajlovic said in a statement following a visit to the toll collection unit of state-run road operator Putevi Srbije.
Last year, Serbia collected about 27 billion dinars ($272 million/230 million euro) from some 57 million vehicles registered on 820 km of motorways subject to toll collection, the toll collection unit director at Putevi Srbije, Milenko Cakovic, said.
"It is positive that the number of users of electronic toll collection is increasing, from about 17% a few years ago, to the current about 60% for passenger and about 77% for freight traffic [...] our objective is to reach 90%," the director of Putevi Srbije, Zoran Drobnjak, noted.
In March, Serbia declared a state of emergency to contain the spread of the coronavirus infection, imposing restrictions on trucks arriving in the country but did not suspend transit road freight traffic to Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania and North Macedonia. The state of emergency was lifted on May 6.
($ = 0.842987 euro)