(ANSA-XINHUA) - BELGRADE, OCTOBER 25 - Serbian President
Aleksandar Vucic and Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Qian
Keming attended on Thursday the welcoming ceremony for the
arrival of the first freight train in the Serbian capital from
Jinan, the capital of east China's Shangdong province. The train
named "Qilu" entered New Belgrade railway station by passing
through a banner that read "First Time in Serbia".
Serbian President Vucic said the first direct freight train
from China traveled 10,500 kilometers in one month, and crossed
Mongolia, Russia, Belarus, Poland and Hungary before reaching
Serbia. He explained that the 500 tons of equipment delivered
Thursday will allow China Railways and the China Communications
Construction Company (CCCC) to advance with full steam on their
high-speed Belgrade-Budapest railway construction project. He
said that Serbia's key priorities in the fields of
infrastructure development and communications could not be
realized without cooperation with China, and announced that the
Serbian section of the new high-speed rail link will be
completed in the autumn of 2021.
For his part, Qian said that the China-Europe railway service
connects countries participating in the Belt and Road
Initiative. This transport and logistics link serves as a bridge
of friendship that connects them. "This is an important signal
for the acceleration of the construction of the Serbian section
of the Belgrade-Budapest railway," Qian said. He said that
"there has been accelerated growth of bilateral trade" between
Serbia and China, "followed by great results in all fields,
especially infrastructure." Officials of the City of Belgrade
and members of the Serbian government, as well as Chinese
Ambassador to Serbia Chen Bo and Chinese construction workers
also attended the welcoming ceremony.
Following Qian's meeting with Serbia's Deputy Prime Minister
Zorana Mihajlovic, the Serbian government said in a press
release that the value of infrastructure projects in Serbia
financed by China exceeded 13 billion euros, and trade exchanges
tripled in 2019 year-on-year. (ANSA-XINHUA).
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