Serbia gets 14 mln euro EU grant for Djerdap 1 HPP locks overhaul

The European Commission (EC) has agreed to provide a grant of 14 million euro ($16.5 million) to the Serbian government for the reconstruction of the navigation locks of Djerdap 1 hydropower plant (HPP), located on the Danube, the infrastructure ministry said.

The grant, provided by the EU Commission's Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA), will allow the government to increase the number of vessels passing through the locks to 9,700 annually from the current 6,000, infrastructure ministry Zorana Mihajlovic said, as quoted in a statement by the ministry earlier this week.

The financing is provided under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) and hopefully will contribute to the growth of the Serbian economy, the executive director of INEA, Dirk Beckers, said in the statement.

"The current value of investments in water transport is 280 million euro, and they include, among others, the reconstruction of the port in Smederevo, the improvement of the Sava waterway and a project making the signalisation of waterways more efficient," Mihajlovic said during the signing of the contract for the grant.

The Rhine-Danube Corridor provides the main east-west link across Continental Europe. Tracing its route along the Danube River, it connects Strasbourg and Southern Germany with the Central European cities of Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest, before passing through the Romanian capital Bucharest to culminate at the Black Sea port of Constanta.

($ = 0.8461 euro)

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