Current projects of inland waterway transport infrastructure in Serbia

In the previous period, the development of ports and harbours in the Republic of Serbia was mainly related to the needs of large industrial plants and the export of agricultural products. The only exceptions were those three ports that had a wider commercial function, i.e. provided a range of logistics services for third parties.

Nowadays, in the context of global trade, the competitiveness of a market is reflected, first of all,byits capacity to organize an efficient transportation system. Inventories of goods are mostly "on wheels", and the transport infrastructure capacity is the measure of the ability to absorb new traffic flows.

Within the framework of its transport policy, the European Union has included the Rhine-Danube transport corridor as one of the nine most important ones. In order to reduce congestion on road traffic routes, and by promoting the use of the most environmentally friendly mode of transport and multimodality, Member States have been granted access to various funds that finance the construction of missing infrastructure and the improvement of the existing one, as well as to projects that eliminate administrative barriers and allow for better connection between water transport and other types of transport.

Through its own funds and the use of pre-accession funds, the Republic of Serbia is actively working on the improvement of navigation conditions and the enhancement of port capacity. Among the current projects, we should mention: hydro technical and dredging works on critical sectors of the Danube and Sava, the reconstruction of the ship lock at HPP Đerdap1, the implementation of the electronic waterway marking system, the expansion of port capacity in Smederevo and construction of the rail and road access infrastructure, the construction of new ports in Belgrade and Apatin, while the expansion of the capacities of other ports shall be taken into consideration in accordance with the demand and commercial possibilities.

In addition to the above, we are intensively working, in cooperation with the Border Police Directorate and the Customs Administration, on the redefinition of border crossing points for river transport, as well as on joint procedures for ships in international traffic, when the port of loading or destination port is in the Republic of Serbia.

By improving overall navigation conditions on inland waterways, as well as by investing in the rail and road networks, we will create the environmentfor ports to become large logistics centers, which not only perform import and export traffic, but are also capable of accepting significant transit traffic and providing a wide range of logistics services.