Vozd Karadjordje Highway: 82 Km for 1.3 Billion Euros

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic toured works on the Vozd Karadjordje highway today, September 12, on the section near Mladenovac. It was there that he gave, for the first time, the full price tag and scope of the project: the highway runs 82 kilometers, and building it costs more than 1.3 billion euros.

“The price is more than one billion three hundred million, I’m talking about the whole highway, 82 kilometers,” Vucic told reporters at the site.

The works are being carried out by the Chinese company Sandong, under a design, build and pre-finance model, meaning the company advances the construction funds itself while the state repays them later. According to the president, this arrangement does not put pressure on the budget or on Serbia’s fiscal deficit. The commercial contract and the pre-financing agreement were signed in Belgrade on May 7. The signatories were Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Minister Aleksandra Sofronijevic, Corridors of Serbia director Aleksandar Antic, and the director of Sandong’s Serbian branch, Cang Sjusijen.

Is the Vozd Karadjordje highway 82 or 83 kilometers long?

Sources disagree on the exact length of the route. At the construction site, Vucic spoke of 82 kilometers for the entire highway, a figure also used by the outlet Kurir. The portal Srpski Ugao, however, puts the first phase of the project at around 83 kilometers. The gap is small but real, and no official statement has yet cleared it up.

Divided across the length of the road, the 1.3 billion euro price comes out to roughly 15 million euros per kilometer, according to a calculation by Informer. Part of that cost comes from the 78 bridge structures along the route, as well as the Oglavak and Trbusnica tunnels, which Vucic singled out as especially expensive stretches because of the difficult terrain.

Mladenovac gets 20 million euros for its water problems

The president also announced spending outside the main contract. “We have problems in Mladenovac, we’ll have to invest 20 million euros,” Vucic said, explaining that the money would go toward repairing the town’s water network and wells. If no outside investor is found, he added, the problem will be solved through a state-owned company, following a model he said had already been used in Presevo.

Once the highway is finished, the drive from Mladenovac to central Belgrade should take 35 minutes, and the trip to Arandjelovac no more than 45 minutes. “From Mladenovac to central Belgrade, 35 minutes, to Arandjelovac 45 minutes at most,” the president specified.

The Vozd Karadjordje route passes through the territories of the following municipalities:

• Sopot
• Mladenovac
• Lazarevac
• Arandjelovac
• Topola
• Raca
• Lapovo
• Velika Plana
• Svilajnac
• Despotovac
• Bor

The highway connects to the E-75 and Milos Veliki highways, linking central Serbia with the eastern and western parts of the country.

Deadline to Arandjelovac: three years, or by the end of 2029?

There is also a discrepancy over the deadline. At the site, Vucic said the section to Arandjelovac would be finished within three years, while Informer’s own headline on the same event states the highway to Arandjelovac will be completed before the end of 2029. The two claims are not necessarily at odds, since three years from September 2026 lands roughly around the end of that year too, but no precise date has been given in an official statement so far.

On what the project means for the region, the president did not mince words:

This is a big deal for all of northern Sumadija. Kosmaj will become the new Fruska Gora, and it will mean a great deal for Topola, for Raca, and for Batocina too.

The comparison to Fruska Gora refers to the tourism potential Vucic says the highway opens up for the hilly area north of Arandjelovac that the route runs through.

Vozd Karadjordje is part of a wider string of infrastructure projects the president has been presenting to the public in recent weeks, including a visit to works at the Serbia Clinical Center, where he announced an investment of 350 million euros. By the end of the year, according to the announcement made at the site, an additional 60 kilometers of highway should open to traffic:

• the section near Sremska Raca
• the section near Slepcevici
• part of the Morava highway, from the Vrba interchange to Adrani, near Kragujevac

“People didn’t even hope for this, let alone dream of it,” Vucic said, reflecting on how uncertain the Belgrade to Arandjelovac highway looked just three years ago.