Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Transport and Communications Minister Ismir Jusko spoke to N1 about the Sunday meeting with the Turkish delegation, as well as the negotiations for the construction of the Sarajevo-Belgrade expressway which should cost EUR 3 billion. He announced a short visit to Turkey.

Jusko told N1 that the Sunday’s meeting was too short to discuss all the issues related to the construction of the Sarajevo-Belgrade highway.  

“We managed to collect and provide all the information and they (the Turkish delegation) made a feasibility study,” Jusko said and added he was most interested in the financial estimate of this project.

For the first time ever, he learned that the Turkish investors are interested in the so-called Build–operate–transfer system according to which some 50,000 vehicles should be the daily frequency of vehicles on a particular section, for the system to pay-off.

Jusko added that he will try to schedule a meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Minister Ahmet Arslan, as soon as possible, in order to get the information on the financial estimates for this project.  

Speaking to N1, he stressed that there is a public confusion on whether they will build a highway or an expressway. Jusko explained that both routes, the one via Tuzla and the one via Visegrad, will be express-ways because the daily vehicle frequency does not exceed 10.000 cars on either route. He also said that the project should cost little over EUR 3 billion.    

Turkey expressed readiness to financially support the highway construction, leaving it to Bosnia and Serbia to decide on the routes that would connect their two capitals. After the entity governments of the Republika Srpska (RS) and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) failed to agree on one of the two potential routes that would connect Bosnia with Serbia's part of the highway, Turkey said it would finance both routes.