Key financial data on the reconstruction of the Novi Sad railway station are still unavailable

Although the Government of Serbia, Railway Infrastructure and the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Novi Sad made publicly available many documents related to the reconstruction of the Novi Sad railway station, key information about the financial side of the deal is still unavailable.

The Government of Serbia published Annex 1 of the contract (document no. 195), from June 2021, on its website, but not the price table, although it is stated that it is an "integral part" of that annex. That table should show how much the Government has committed to pay for certain sections of the railway and works at certain railway stations.

More importantly, there is a lack of information on the basis of which the Government of Serbia, the Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure and Railway Infrastructure concluded that the price they will pay for those works is acceptable, both in 2018, when the entire work was contracted, worth $1,162,810,000, and and 2021, when an annex specifying the value of certain works was signed.

Instead of documents, the only source of information about the total price of the paid works on the station building is therefore still only the statements of Goran Vesić and Aleksandar Vučić, according to which the price was 16 million euros and 15.65 million euros, respectively. On the other hand, according to the published estimate of the CIP from April 2021, the value of the planned works with tax was 419 million dinars, which is 3.5 million euros. Since it is known that additional works in the value of approximately 2.8 million euros were contracted with Annex 2 from December 2022, it can be assumed that the Serbian state authorities, when concluding Annex 1, undertook to pay approximately 12.85 million euros for the reconstruction of the station building more, i.e. 3.6 times more than the only publicly available estimate of the value of the works!

For now, it is unknown how much of that money the members of the Chinese consortium (CRIC and CCCC) transferred to numerous subcontractors. On the "Railway Infrastructure" website, it is expressly stated that they do not possess that documentation, and judging by the information of the Novi Sad Higher Public Prosecutor's Office, those contracts were not collected even in connection with the current criminal proceedings.

As Transparency Serbia has already pointed out, it is also unknown in which procedure the subcontractors were selected. According to the contract, there was an obligation for the Chinese consortium to publish a public call for tenders, whereby it "must not restrict competition" and "must ensure that the selection is made publicly and transparently". The available documentation shows the qualifications of subcontractors and the consent given by the Ministry and Infrastructure for their engagement, but no information on the previous procedure for their selection.

Bearing in mind that in 2023 alone, Serbia paid as much as 2.7 billion euros to contractors who were not selected in a tender, but directly agreed on the basis of an intergovernmental agreement, Transparency Serbia calls on the Government of Serbia to publish without delay all contracts related to all such projects and their annexes, as well as for projects that are implemented on the basis of special laws, instead of applying the Law on Public Procurement. It is no less important that the citizens be presented with information on the basis of which the Government of Serbia, in the absence of competition, determined that the price requested by the pre-selected contractor was realistic, since the currently available data creates serious doubts that this is not the case.