Higher highway tolls as of July 1?

An 11 percent increase in the price of highway toll should be approved by the Government of Serbia, Putevi Srbije CEO Zoran Drobnjak said on Monday and expressed expectation that, if that consent was given, toll would be increased on July 1.

- We expect the highway toll to be higher as of July 1, enabling us to register a revenue of 800-900 million dinars prior to the year's end - Drobnjak said at a press conference.

He stressed that that company had asked for an increase in the price of toll in its business plan for 2011, which had been accepted by the company's Managing Board and should be adopted by the Serbian government in early June.

Drobnjak expressed expectation that 19 billion dinars would be invested in the maintenance of main routes and regional roads and highways and announced that Putevi Srbije would suggest that the maintenance works should be entrusted to the companies that had signed a contract with that public company, which should then hire companies within Nibens Group, of which owner Milo Djuraskovic had been arrested one week earlier, to work on maintenance and be paid for that on a regular basis.

- We will have a meeting of the Managing Board tomorrow and we will hand that proposal to Minister Milutin Mrkonjic to forward it to the government for adoption - said Putevi Srbije CEO.

Speaking about the revenue of Putevi Srbije in the first quarter of 2011, Drobnjak said that that company had registered a RSD 8.2 billion revenue and that a total of 33.5 million vehicles had been operated in 2010, 3 or 4 percent more than in 2009.