World Bank approves €125m for 2 Serbian projects: reforming state companies and finishing Corridor X

The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors has approved two Serbian projects with a total value of €124.9m, the bank announced today.

The first is a development loan of €89.8m, paid into the state budget as support for reducing the state role in commercial companies and providing conditions for creating better jobs. The second, they say, is an investment of €35m in improving Serbia’s connections to the region and the mobility of goods, services and people by completing the Corridor X motorway.

The announcement asserts that this Second Development Loan for the Reform of State-Owned Enterprises (Second SOE DPL) continues assistance to Serbia for the reform of state-owned commercial companies. Its aim is to reduce the state’s share in the production of goods and services and its indirect subsidy of companies working in the real economy, improving conditions for investment.

The loan is also supposed to support better results and management at state-owned enterprises and to solve the short-term social and operational consequences of restructuring and resolving issues of the availability of assets.

This project supports concrete measures to accelerate restructuring and a final solution for companies on the portfolio of the Privatisation Agency and for a number of social commercial companies, better management and drafting of primary and secondary legislation that regulates the work of those companies, monitoring and greater transparency of their work, and social and operational consequences of the reform of these companies.

“Thanks to a dialogue with the government and reforms undertaken while this project was under preparation, the high costs of these companies that burdened the economy and had to be covered by taxpayers have been progressively reduced”, said World Bank Head of Office for Serbia Tony Verheijen.

The World Bank also says that the project for extra financing for the Corridor X motorway will help Serbia to better use its geographical position at the heart of the Balkans along the pan-European Corridor X. The explanation is that building the remaining stretches of motorway will encourage more transit traffic which will help Serbian industry.

It adds that the project will also finance the procurement of additional equipment that will improve traffic safety and help create a traffic accident database.

The money will also be used for rehabilitation after the catastrophic floods that hit Serbia in 2014, for removing unexploded ordnance found while building the motorway and digging and protecting archaeological sites.

Translation provided by: www.halifax-translation.com