Guarantees issue should be resolved as soon as possible

KOPAONIK - Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic said Tuesday that the project to build a section of the South Stream gas pipeline in Serbia is being held back by the problem of provision of state guarantees and called for the issue to be resolved as soon as possible.

“The question is how to provide state guarantees for the Serbian section of South Stream,” Dacic told reporters at an annual business event organized on the Kopaonik mountain in southern Serbia.

Asked whether the current crisis in Ukraine has helped slow down the process even more, Dacic said that the problem is in the fact that the Serbian parliament has been dissolved ahead of the early elections, scheduled for March 16, because that postponed the passage of some relevant laws.

The two sides in the project have agreed that Russia is to finance the construction of the pipeline and Serbia to pay its share from revenues to come from charging fees for gas transit.

The issue has been delaying the organization of the tender process for construction contracts and the commencement of the works for two or three months now, he said.

In a statement to reporters during a break between panel discussions at the 2014 Kopaonik Business Forum, Dacic said that the costs of the works on the Serbian section of the pipeline are close to EUR 2 billion, and that the Serbian share is 49 percent.

“I hope that we will find a way to make everything go well. (Deputy Prime Minister) Aleksandar Vucic and I held discussions with the Russian partners and I am sure everything will be all right,” said the prime minister.

Photo Tanjug/J. Pap