At the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, Serbia is first Mid-Eastern European country to establish a comprehensive strategic partnership with China. The Belgrade Belt Highway Project at its capital is a landmark for POWERCHINA to open its European market. At the opening ceremony of the S5 bid section, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic mentioned an old Chinese saying "if you want to get rich, build roads first", which highly resonated with the Serbia's development concept in recent years.
The close Sino-Serbian relationship and the friendliness from the Serbian government and people to Chinese enterprises have served as a good foundation to advance the Belgrade Belt Highway Project. The project has recruited many Serbian engineers and senior managers to localize its management, which not only reduced the transition phase in the preliminary stage, but also laid a solid foundation for its smooth implementation.
Jovica Radic, deputy chief engineer of the project owner, said that the completion of the highway will ease traffic pressure and traffic diversions in the capital, reduce the number of traffic accidents, lower the driving cost, reduce urban pollution, and cut down harmful emissions and noise from vehicles in inner-city areas.
"The design is a big challenge. Contractors are willing to tackle this big challenge and they have invested a lot of skills and efforts in a limited time. Tunnels and bridges account for a great proportion of the project, which poses difficulty to construction. However, under such circumstances, POWERCHINA's hard work, management skills, high technical level, and superb construction capability have proven itself to be a reliable and credible partner in the infrastructure sector in the future, " said Jovica Radic.
He expected that Chinese companies can share the fast-development experience in China through their intelligence, political influence and technology and contribute to Serbia's development.
Serbia, officially the Republic of Serbia, is a landlocked country in South Eastern and Central Europe located in the middle of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans.
Power Construction Corporation of China, branded as PowerChina, is a wholly State-owned company administered by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission and part of the heavy and civil engineering construction industry.