The development of the Hungarian stretch of the Budapest-Belgrade railway line has begun with the coming into force of the construction contract. At a meeting today with enterprises supervising the realisation of the project, Minister for Innovation and Technology László Palkovics said preparations are moving forward according to schedule and the project is expected to be completed by 2025.

In his speech, the Minister pointed out that railway projects are at the focus of EU development projects within the 2021-2027 programming period, and the fact that major opportunities are awaiting Hungary is reassuring for designers, research institutes and engineering companies alike. “Our goal is to be unavoidable from the perspective of rail freight transport, and one of the priority development areas of this goal is the development of the Hungarian stretch of Budapest-Belgrade railway line”, Mr. Palkovics added. The Minister emphasised the importance of cooperation in the interests of enabling travel along the new stretch of railway line to begin in 60 months’ time.
As a result of the development of the railway line, Hungary will be offering the fastest transport route for goods between the Greek ports and Western Europe. As a transit country for freight traffic arriving in Europe from Asia, Hungary will also profit, as a result of which it can exploit its favourable position to become the region’s logistics centre. In addition, passenger travel time between the two cities will be cut to less than half from the current 8 hours.

The representatives of MÁV Zrt., RM International Zrt., China Tiejiuju Engineering & Construction Ltd., China Railway Electrification Engineering Group (Hungary) Ltd., FŐBER Zrt., KTI Transport Science Institute Nonprofit Ltd., Chinese-Hungarian Railway Nonprofit Zrt., and Chinese Ambassador Duan Jielong all took part in today’s meeting concerning the realisation of the project.

(Ministry for Innovation and Technology/MTI)