January 11 (SeeNews) - Serbia has repaid early a 172.7 million euro ($210 million) outstanding debt to Azerbaijan under a loan for the construction of a Corridor XI road section, finance minister Sinisa Mali said.
The government has repaid the debt using proceeds from the sale of its 83.23% shareholding interest in blue-chip lender Komercijalna Banka [BEL:KMBN] to Slovenia's Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB) [LJE:NLBR] for 394.7 million euro, Mali said in a press release on Saturday.
"In this way, we saved the citizens of Serbia 25.9 million euro in interest that they would have paid by 2027," Mali said.
Last month, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said the repayment of the debt will reduce Serbia's public debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio by 0.42 percentage points to 58.5%.
Serbia agreed to receive a 300 million euro loan from the Azeri government for the construction of the Preljina-Ljig section of Corridor XI in 2012. The construction works were carried out by Azeri construction company Azvirt.
($ = 0.822273 euro)