BELGRADE (Serbia), May 3 (SeeNews) – Serbia will invest 250 million euro ($272.8 million) in equipment at coal mining company Kolubara, part of state-owned energy utility EPS, this year the country's prime minister said.
The public procurement process will be simplified to allow Kolubara to acquire all the necessary equipment for production in the next hundred days, a government press release quoted Aleksandar Vucic as saying during a visit to the company on Monday.
In 2017, Kolubara is expected to raise its output to over 28 million t of coal.
Kolubara, based in Lazarevac in central Serbia, produces around 30 million t of coal annually. It supplies coal to the country's biggest power generating complex, TENT.
The Kolubara mining basin suffered the biggest damage among all EPS units during the May floods in 2014, when its open pit mines were inundated, disrupting production for several months.
($=0.9165 euro)