Speaking about the construction of highways in Serbia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, emphasized that he is guided by the principle that investment must also be made in the less developed parts of the country, despite the lack of economic viability, but that the authorities in Sarajevo do not agree with this.
He spoke in an interview about how the government must build even where there is no economic justification and profitability of the project, and that many, including the authorities in BiH, who refuse to build the highway via Visegrad, do not understand this.
“We have a different view from BiH. We would like a highway to be built from Belgrade to Sarajevo via Visegrad, but we cannot reach an agreement with our partners in Sarajevo because they say there is no profitability that a feasibility study would show,” said Vucic.
He explained that the competent authorities in BiH say that if the road is built to Visegrad, then it must go to Gorazde, and they raise the question of whether it will go via Pale and Praca.
“Whether it will go via Praca or Rogatica is now the question, but they won’t do it precisely because there is no profitability. I think that is a mistake and that politics must always help in that regard,” said Vucic.
There has been no response from the BiH authorities to these claims so far.
The idea of building a highway between Sarajevo and Belgrade is decades old. During the Trilateral Business Forum BiH–Serbia–Turkey at the end of October 2016, the Republic of Turkey offered to carry it out.
Six years ago, BiH and Serbia signed an agreement on cooperation on the construction project of the Belgrade – Sarajevo highway, worth four billion euros.
Along the route through BiH, it is necessary to build 133 bridges with a total length of 25.8 kilometers, as well as 53 tunnels with a total length of 37.5 kilometers.
The authorities within BiH were unable for months to agree on which route the highway from BiH towards Serbia should take.
At the beginning of September 2022, two different highway sections were agreed upon. One would go from Sarajevo towards the northeast of BiH – Tuzla and Bijeljina, and the other from Sarajevo towards eastern BiH – via Pale, Rogatica, Visegrad to Vardiste in Serbia.
According to the latest announcements, Serbia is expected to complete the Kuzmin – Sremska Raca section of the highway by the end of the year.
As for the section connecting Sarajevo and Belgrade via Pale, Praca, and Visegrad, a “preliminary design and pre-feasibility study for the Sarajevo – Vardiste expressway through the European Union (EU)program“ was done in 2018.
