Minister of Finance Sinish Mali stated that the first line of the Belgrade metro will be completed in 2030 and that "major construction works" are expected during this year metro station.
Mali announced that the first tunnel boring machines (so-called "moles") will arrive in Serbia during the second half of 2026 and that a contract for the design and construction of the first metro line has already been signed with the French company Alstom, which deals with electromechanical works and the production of compositions for the metro.
"The contract is worth as much as one billion euros, and in my opinion it was the last contract, the last legal thing we should do," he said.
Mali said that the project for the second metro line has also been completed and he expects that its construction will start in 2027 or 2028 at the latest.
"We are late, but not through our fault"
Since 2014, Siniša Mali has repeatedly announced the dates of the start and end of works on the Belgrade subway, however, each of those deadlines was missed.
Goran Vesić and Aleksandar Šapić made similar, never-received promises, depending on who was the "first" man of the city at a given moment, as well as Aleksandar Vučić as former prime minister and current president.
Mali says that the Belgrade metro construction project is delayed, because a lot of geomechanical and geological research was needed.
"We are late, but it is not our fault. The project is simply late, because when you are doing such a responsible and big thing, you need to do all possible geomechanical and geological research and so on. Since the first line is 21 kilometers long, if I am not mistaken, and the second is 25 kilometers, it took much more time," he added.
What has been signed so far?
In addition to the contract with "Alstom", the public utility company "Belgrade Metro and Train" signed a contract on May 16 last year with the Chinese companies PowerChina and CRCHI (China Railway Construction Heavy Industry Corporation Limited) for the purchase of two "mole" machines for drilling the tunnel section of Line 1, phase 1 of the Belgrade Metro.
The signatories then announced that the machines would arrive in Serbia by April or June 2026.
In August, the delegation of "Belgrade Metro and Train" visited the production facilities of the CRCHI factory in the Chinese city of Changsha, where TBM machines are made, and the director of that company, Andreja Mladenović, said then that the machines will be made specifically for the soil conditions in Belgrade and that in the first phase of the metro, 11 kilometers of underground tunnels will be dug out of a total of 15 kilometers of route with 15 stations.
Also, on December 19, the Financial Protocol was signed between the Government of Serbia and the Government of France, and Finance Minister Siniša Mali pointed out that the protocol envisages financial support in the form of a loan from the French Treasury in the amount of 150 million euros for the implementation of the Belgrade metro project.
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