Road toll price increase delayed again – Government deciding on Roads of Serbia's request in early 2017

The Government of Serbia should consider the request made by the Roads of Serbia to increase the road toll by 10% in early 2017, stated Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Zorana Mihajlovic today.

While answering press questions, she reminded that it had been previously announced that the road toll would be increased from January 1, 2017 and added that “the road toll should be increased, considering the fact that it hasn't been done since 2008”.

The Roads of Serbia has asked several times for the road toll to be increased by 10%, pointing out that the price hasn't changed since 2008, whereas the prices of materials, energy sources and equipment used to maintain highways and other roads increased in the meantime.

The increase would bring RSD 1.6 billion more to the enterprise for road maintenance. That was the estimate of the increase in toll revenues from the toll collection in 2015, which amounted to RSD 16.6 billion.

The estimate is that the toll revenues in 2016 will amount to RSD 19.1 billion, including the revenues from the recently built Presevo toll booths and the Sirig-Subotica section.

The new price list suggested to the government by the Roads of Serbia envisions the price of RSD 800 instead of RSD 730 on the Belgrade-Nis section, RSD 370 instead of RSD 340 on the Belgrade-Sid section and RSD 320 instead of RSD 290 on the Belgrade-Subotica section.

The Roads of Serbia earlier stated that Serbia had the lowest toll per kilometer of the European countries using the same toll collection system. For example, Serbia, with its EUR 0.03 per kilometer, is twice as cheap as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Portugal, where the price is EUR 0.06 per kilometer.

The enterprise explains that vignettes were being considered as a possible model, but that the system had proven to be unfair to drivers who occasionally use shorter sections of the highway and those who are in transit and that it was therefore discarded.

Ministarstvo građevinarstva, saobraćaja i infrastrukture Republike Srbije

JP Putevi Srbije Beograd

Zorana Mihajlovic

road toll

road toll in Serbia

road toll price increase

highway

toll revenues

vignettes