Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Construction.Transport and Infrastructure, prof. Zorana Mihajlović, PhD, and the Acting Director of the PE “Roads of Serbia”, Zoran Drobnjak, visited today the premises of the Sector for Toll Collection in Ustanička street and saw the offices of the Department for Tolling Supervision and the Department for Electronic Toll Collection.
On this occasion Mihajlović said that investment in motorways remained a priority, regardless of the reduction in traffic this year, so that Serbia would continue to strengthen its position as a transit country in comparison to other routes.
“Our estimates are that this year toll revenues will be reduced by 40 to 45 million euros as opposed to the planned ones. There will be approximately 5.4 million vehicles less by 3rd August than last year, but the reduction in revenues is by approximately 3.5 percent or around 500 million dinars. That’s the consequence of the continuous flow of the international traffic.”, she said.
Minister Mihajlović has pointed out that Serbia has, in the previous years, completed and opened for traffic around 350 kilometres of motorways, confirming its significance in comparison to some transit routes, such as the Route 4. The increase of traffic and tolling has been stopped this year and the coronavirus epidemic has had consequences, but that won’t last forever and we are continuing with investments and construction of new motorways. More than 200 km of motorways are being constructed and, in a few years, those motorways will be in toll collection system”, Mihajlović said.
She added that, besides the motorways under construction, such as the Morava Corridor or the motorway Sremska Rača – Kuzmin, a tender for the section Niš – Pločnik would be announced at the end of August.
Executive Director of the Sector for Toll Collection, Milenko Caković, said that 820 km of motorways were in the toll collection system, and that, the year before, around 57 million vehicles had been on the motorways and that the revenue from toll collection was approximately 27 billion dinars.
Acting Director, Zoran Drobnjak, said that the PE “Roads of Serbia” would use this year’s reduction of traffic to rehabilitate around 190 kilometres of motorways.
“The positive aspect is also the increase of the number of electronic toll collection users, from around 17 percent a few years back, to around 60 percent for passenger traffic and around 77 percent for cargo traffic at the moment. We will continue to explain to traffic participants that it is better if they used electronic toll collection, because they pass more quickly, have also a certain discount and our goal is to increase that percentage to more than 90 percent”, director Drobnjak said.
