DINKIĆ: Serbia to introduce vignettes in 2010

Minister of Economy, Mlađan Dinkić, announced today (November 3, 2008) that the toll for foreign vehicles would be brought to the same level as the toll for local vehicles and he pointed out that so-called "vignettes" for vehicles on local highways would be introduced in 2010 in order to accelerate traffic flow across Serbia.

Dinkić invited Greek companies to invest in Serbia and he pointed to the privileges that our country had thanks to the Free Trade Agreement with Russia and future agreements with Belarus and Ukraine.

In the introduction speech at the conference on the investment opportunities for Greek companies, Dinkić reminded that Serbia was also a member of the CEFTA Agreement that represented the market with 55m people.

Dinkić announced that the development of "Corridor 10" would start the next year and that it would be financed from Serbia's budget and from the loans of foreign banks. He also reminded that Greek Government had set aside about 100m EUR for that purpose within "Helenic" plan.

He said that the section between Leskovac and Macedonian border would be built in the first phase of development of "Corridor 10".

- Within the scope of development of "Corridor 10", Serbia plans to reconstruct and improve railway infrastructure in association with German company "Deutsche Bahn" - said Dinkić and added that the railway infrastructure was important because of export that was carried out between the port of Bar in Montenegro and the port of Salonica in Greece.

- Greece is now the second largest investor in Serbia with about 2 billion EUR worth of investments - Dinkić reminded and added that Greek company "Ote" still owned 20% of Serbian "Telekom", and that there were also market chain "Veropulos" and Department Stores "Beograd" and hotel "Metropol".