Implementation of big irrigation project starts - Investment worth EUR 5 billion

Minister of Agriculture and Trade Dusan Petrovic and Vojvodina Prime Minister Bojan Pajtic marked Thursday (12 April 2012) the commencement of work on a big irrigation project in Serbia in the village of Kruscic, the municipality of Kula, in which about EUR 5 billion will be invested over the next four years.

Attending the beginning of a canal cleaning in Kruscic, Minister Petrovic said that 1.1 million hectares of agricultural land should be irrigated in the forthcoming four-year period.

Our country annually loses about EUR 2 billion because that big project has not been implemented yet, Petrovic pointed out, adding that RSD 5 billion would be earmarked for that project in the 2012 budget.

The first phase includes the cleaning of 600 kilometers of canals in 40 locations in Vojvodina, the water from which should be used to irrigate about 45,000 hectares of land.

A big number of dams and pumping stations will be refurbished, which will take about three months.

On the territory of Belgrade, about 125 kilometers of irrigation canals will be cleaned until late June to allow for irrigation of about 15,000 hectares of land, while the cleaning of canals in Macva will enable the irrigation of additional 2,000 hectares of land, said the minister.

As Petrovic added, the plan for this year is to clean irrigation canals for about 130,000 hectares and build new canals for about 70,000 hectares.

Petrovic specified that the project cost between 1.2 and 1.3 billion euros.

He stressed that the implementation of that big project would make it possible to continue the export trend in the agrarian sector even more successfully. Last year, the value of agricultural exports amounted to USD 2.7 billion.

Bojan Pajtic said that Vojvodina would have a fourth of agricultural fields covered by irrigation systems in five years, which was above the average of the EU countries of 17%.