Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Monday announced a high speed rail line section from Novi Sad to the Serbia Hungary border would be completed by the end of 2024 and that Serbia would continue to develop and change for the better.
"'If you do not think about your future, you cannot have one', said John Galsworthy," Vucic noted at a Novi Sad ceremony marking the start of the construction of the section, a part of a Belgrade Budapest high speed rail line.
He said a section from Belgrade to Novi Sad would be opened to traffic in just two months and that a journey between the two cities would take no more than half an hour.
He said Serbia was looking to the future and was prepared for it.
He said the stretch of the rail line from Belgrade to the Hungarian border would be completed in three years.
"In exactly three years, which is before the end of 2024, we will have a high speed rail line to Hungary, while the Hungarians will complete their section from Serbia to Budapest in the first half of 2025," Vucic noted.
He said the construction of the rail line would mean higher living standards and higher wages for citizens and a better future for Serbian children.
He said a train trip from Novi Sad to Budapest would take only two hours and five minutes.
By pressing a button to start a piling machine, Vucic, Hungarian FM Peter Szijjarto, Chinese Ambassador to Belgrade Chen Bo and a Chinese Railways representative symbolically launched the works on the 108.2 km section from Novi Sad to the border village of Kelebija.
Minister Szijjártó noted that 2020 had been the first year when China’s trade with both the European Union and the United States exceeded the EU US turnover.
“More and more Chinese commodities arrive in the Greek ports and need to be transported to central and western Europe. There is a sharp competition for providing a transit route for them,†he said.
“Serbia and Hungary have entered the race by deciding to construct a modern and safe railway line.†By 2025 both the Hungarian and the Serbian sections of the over 300 kilometre line will have been completed, enabling the two countries to win the race, Minister Szijjártó said.
The project is financed by China, Serbia and Hungary. ■