If the morning shows how the day will unfold, it was already possible, more than five and a half years ago, to anticipate that the American company Bechtel and the Turkish Enka would be paid far more than 745 million euros for the construction of the Morava Corridor, plus an additional 20 per cent for unforeseen costs, as stipulated in the commercial contract signed on behalf of the Government in December 2019 by the then Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure, Zorana Mihajlović.
From the state budget, 221.6 billion dinars, or 1.9 billion euros, have already been paid for what is now the most expensive infrastructure project in Serbia. In addition, this year’s budget includes state guarantees for a further 300 million euros in loans, while on 3 December last year, Parliament confirmed the last of four already contracted loans for the “first digital motorway” in the amount of 260 million.
The Government plans funds for the first digital motorway next year as well
In practical terms, this means that, excluding interest on the loans already contracted at 1.9 billion euros, which will be repaid until 2037, this road will cost at least 2.2 billion euros, or three times more than the price at which it was supposed to be completed before the end of 2023, as announced by President Aleksandar Vučić at the ceremonial opening of works on 28 December 2019. Now, everyone except the contractors would be satisfied if the works were completed by the end of this year.
This is all the more so given that, in the revised Fiscal Strategy for 2026, with projections for 2027 and 2028, the Minister of Finance, Siniša Mali, has planned a further 7.3 billion dinars, or around 62 million euros, for the project next year, which will push the final bill to nearly two and a half billion euros.
Such an outcome could, in fact, have been anticipated as soon as construction began on the motorway from Pojate to Preljina, as evidenced by email correspondence from late 2020 and early 2021 involving numerous state officials, including the State Secretary in the relevant ministry, Aleksandra Damnjanović, now Sofronijević, who has since been promoted to minister following the resignation of Goran Vesić after the collapse of the canopy at Novi Sad railway station and the deaths of 16 people.
Tilting at windmills
The authenticity of this correspondence was confirmed to Radar by the then Dean of the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Belgrade, Professor Vladan Kuzmanović, who at the time was also a member of the Republic Revision Commission. Realising he was fighting a losing battle and that all efforts to draw attention to the identified deficiencies were in vain, deficiencies which should have been remedied before work continued on the section from Kruševac to Adran, in sectors 4 and 6 near Velika Drenova and Vrnjačka Banja, Kuzmanović sent an email on 9 May 2021 to State Secretaries Aleksandra Damnjanović and Milana Rakić, as well as members of the Republic Revision Commission, headed by its president Radojko Obradović.
“You now have the full information, so please remember this email when we witness enormous costs in the construction of the Morava Corridor due to a poor conceptual design and a multitude of unforeseen works, which could have been avoided had you listened to the profession,” Kuzmanović wrote in the final sentence of the email, likely not suspecting that five years later the price of the project would nearly triple.
Earlier in the same message, he once again informed all members of the Commission that the Traffic Institute CIP, as the designer, in its response to the deficiencies identified in a report by Sanja Fric, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, had presented “gross falsehoods and malicious accusations against the rapporteurs and the Faculty, in an obvious attempt to divert the Commission’s attention from the shortcomings it, as the designer, had made during the preparation of the planning document and the conceptual design of the Morava Corridor motorway for sectors 4 and 6”.
Stating that he had therefore been compelled to respond both to the Commission and to the then Minister of Construction, Tomislav Momirović, Kuzmanović also outlined details from a Commission session held on 5 March at the minister’s request, following a meeting on 24 February, where it was agreed to convene a special session on issues related to the Morava Corridor and to vote again on the conceptual design for sectors 4 and 6. It was also agreed that, before that session, all members would receive a “technical-economic and financial analysis demonstrating that (due to higher state interests, i.e. potentially large penalties) the conceptual design of the Morava Corridor – sectors 4 and 6 – should be accepted despite the negative report on the volumes relating to the motorway route and grade-separated interchanges”.
Who removed key objections from the final report of the Republic Revision Commission?
That special session was convened because, at the previous online session, where voting was conducted electronically without the possibility of discussion, Commission members were provided not with the original report by the coordinator of all rapporteurs, Sanja Fric, but with an amended and unsigned consolidated report from which two key objections and the conclusion that the project “is not accepted” had simply been removed. This effectively meant that the Traffic Institute CIP, as the designer, was obliged to correct the identified deficiencies.
In his email, Kuzmanović warned that “anything else would be a dangerous precedent in the work of the Revision Commission” and specified that the solution insisted upon by CIP was around 10 million euros more expensive than that proposed by road experts Sanja Fric, Vladimir Gucić and Goran Mladenović.
In the consolidated report, which Radar also reviewed, Sanja Fric clearly stated that the solution proposed by CIP for the grade-separated interchanges near Vrnjačka Banja and Velika Drenova was “technically correct, but rarely applied in both domestic and international practice, illogical and, above all, irrational and oversized, and that by adjusting the solution there is a justified possibility of significantly reducing the investment in sector 6 (together with the proposed savings in sector 4, amounting to up to 10 million euros in total), without affecting driving safety and traffic security”. She also noted that the designer had been given suggestions on how to optimise the solution but had neither accepted them nor produced an alternative at the conceptual design level.
In contrast, CIP Director Milutin Ignjatović stated in a letter to Minister Momirović on 26 February that “any delay in completing the design documentation directly affects the deadlines set in the commercial contract and has enormous financial consequences”, and that the contract between Serbia and Bechtel had been concluded based on an offer from the Belgrade branch of the American company, “which had insight into the design solutions from the conceptual design of the Traffic Institute CIP, including the solutions for these two grade-separated interchanges”. Ignjatović also claimed that “it is not true that changes to the design solutions in the direction suggested by the reviewer would have any financial consequences, i.e. savings for the financier, the Republic of Serbia”.
Using similar arguments, State Secretaries Damnjanović and Rakić, along with Commission President Radojko Obradović, opposed any changes, citing, among other things, lack of time and contractual penalties that the state would have to pay for each day of delay.
In sum, the designer refused for three months to amend the flawed design of the interchanges and the motorway route, which is far longer than would realistically have been needed to revise the project in line with the rapporteur’s remarks. It is also telling that none of the domestic officials considered asking Bechtel and Enka to pay penalties, even though they had already exceeded the agreed deadline for completion by 27 months and are, by all indications, set to finish their part of the work with a delay of as much as four years.
How a majority was secured to prevent any changes to the project
When voting finally took place, the result at the session itself, attended by six Commission members, was tied: three votes in favour and three against. When the votes of those who had voted electronically within the prescribed deadline, until 8 a.m. on 3 March, were added, there was still no majority, as 13 members were in favour and 13 against. The majority required to adopt the conceptual design for the disputed sectors was nevertheless secured by subsequently accepting additional “in favour” votes submitted electronically after the deadline had expired, with Aleksandra Damnjanović explaining that the limitation on voting had been “an oversight by the professional service” of the relevant ministry.
All things considered, it can be inferred that, before taking over the vacant position left by Goran Vesić, the current minister, in her previous role as State Secretary under Minister Tomislav Momirović, and before that under Zorana Mihajlović, effectively presented Commission members with a falsified consolidated final report from which two key objections, relating to the route itself and the two interchanges, had simply been removed. For traffic engineers, these are the most critical elements, as they significantly affect road safety once the “first digital motorway” in Serbia is eventually completed and opened to traffic. If these two aspects are flawed, it is, for traffic experts, like praising a bicycle without any wheels.
Such a conclusion is further supported by another email from Kuzmanović, in which he warned Aleksandra Damnjanović that “it is unacceptable for members of the Revision Commission to receive reports that are unsigned and not prepared by the appointed coordinator of rapporteurs”, adding that “lawyers would call this a forgery”.
The authorities altered the negative report
Naturally, there was no reply. In fact, one came shortly afterwards, as the authorities found a “Solomonic solution” to this problem as well, simply by changing the composition of the Republic Revision Commission and removing those who “nit-pick”, “split hairs” and refuse to endorse everything the executive authorities propose, regardless of the cost. Five years after this debate, which ended with the authorities ignoring all expert warnings, it is clear that the Morava Corridor will cost more than even the greatest pessimists had feared.
On the other hand, Bechtel recently told Forbes Serbia that “the unit price of the motorway has not changed”, that “the project was not fully developed at the time the contract was signed”, that “the agreed price was structured to allow for subsequent development and further specification of key project elements”, and that some “additional works” have since been agreed. Among these, Bechtel notes, is “a major flood protection system to safeguard the motorway and communities from the devastating floods of the West Morava River”, which, “together with the motorway, will increase resilience to climate change and ensure that Serbia’s investment in high-quality infrastructure is sustainable in the long term”.
Secret annexes and a non-existent interstate agreement between Serbia and the USA
This, presumably, is meant to explain why each of the 112.4 kilometres of this motorway will ultimately cost Serbian taxpayers around 20 million euros per kilometre instead of the contracted maximum of eight million. However, neither Bechtel nor the relevant ministry has disclosed whether any annexes to the original contract were signed, or on what basis contractors have already been paid one billion euros more than the maximum agreed amount. If such annexes exist, none have been made public.
Nor has the interstate agreement between the governments of Serbia and the United States ever been published, although, as still stated on the official website of the relevant ministry, it was precisely this agreement that served as the basis for awarding the construction of the motorway from Pojate to Preljina to Bechtel and its Turkish partner Enka without a tender, through direct negotiation. The catch, however, is that such an interstate agreement was never signed at all. For this reason, until recently, when it was still planning to gift the Army General Staff building to Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of the US President, the authorities intended for the Republic of Serbia to establish a joint company with his firm in the United Arab Emirates, as Serbia does have such an agreement with that country.
Taking all this into account, will anyone really be surprised if the cost of the Morava Corridor continues to rise in the period ahead, without a single annex? Through direct negotiation – how else?
(Radar, 26.03.2026)
https://radar.nova.rs/ekonomija/moravski-koridor-dve-i-po-milijarde-evra/