Bosnia’s Transport and Communications Minister Edin Forto met in Sarajevo with Serbia’s Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Goran Vesic with whom he agreed that the focus should be on regional connectivity.

“I think we should concentrate on regional connectivity. Transport infrastructure is both our goal and our means of getting closer to the EU through the transport community, which is an EU project in which we participate equally. Some of the projects are already visible and we, together with the Government of Serbia, will apply to the EU for grants and financing of at least two projects: the railway that stretches from Banja Luka through Doboj, Tuzla, Zvornik and further into Serbia and the reconstruction of the bridges connecting BiH and Serbia,” Forto said after the meeting.

“This is something that we’ll do in the near future, like the digitization of transport permits, which became a kind of bureaucratic burden. We want to simplify it and make that step in the digital sense that some countries that are much more developed [than us] haven’t made, to show that we know and can do it and we are moving towards the EU,” Forto added.

Vesic announced that in the next few years, Serbia and BiH will be connected by two highways and expressways.

“Our first highway is Belgrade-Sarajevo. We will finish the section from Sremska Raca to Kuzmin. It will be released in 2025 when the section of the highway from Sremska Raca to Bijeljina is completed. That part of the highway is being built by Republika Srpska, and we will finance it. It is time for Belgrade and Sarajevo to be connected by a highway,” said Vesic.

Currently, the Ruma-Sabac highway and the Sabac-Loznica expressway are under construction, which will be a connection to the Sepak border crossing.

Vesic also recalled that the highway in Pozega is currently under construction, which is heading towards Bosnia and Herzegovina, i.e. towards Visegrad.

“We want to reconstruct the railways and the Belgrade-Sarajevo railway. It goes through Serbia to Zvornik and we applied for the railway reconstruction to the European Union. Now the idea is that Serbia and BiH jointly apply to the EU to reconstruct the Belgrade-Sarajevo railway. Let's look for a grant together and I believe we will be more successful,” Vesic noted.