Largest container terminal south of Vienna in Pancevo – Port in Banat has much higher potential than the Belgrade one

(Dunav Port in Pancevo)

Last week, Belgrade hosted the Introduction to the Transport and Logistics Market in Serbia conference which the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Serbia organized as part of its market research of Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia for the needs of German SME’s. This time, some ten German businessmen on behalf of German companies which have not been present yet in Serbia and regional markets, arrived.

This conference in Belgrade, which attracted a large number of visitors, was dominated by current infrastructure situation analysis, traffic and logistics and other investment options in the field.

The importance of this conference and projects which, based on the German Bundestag conclusion, is supported by the market development for German SME’s, was confirmed in its welcome speeches by Gabriel Benemann, Manager of the Economy Department in the German Embassy in Belgrade and Martin Knapp, the new director of the Delegation of the German economy in Serbia.

Slavoljub Jevtic, the President of the national association of the forwarding companies and agents Transport i logistika, in his layout, reflected upon transport – logistics potentials in Serbia. Speaking of the network of Pan-European corridors in our country, he said that the railway corridor 10, which should be one of the most important grounds of domestic trade, due to a bad shape of railways, low commercial speed, very poor, lack of trailing assets and wagons, transports only some 12 million tons of goods per year which affects large losses and even bigger governmental support. Apart from these problems, he identified complicated and slow administrative procedures which are an additional brake in development of this field.

(great interest in the expert event)

If we add problems with river Corridor 7 such as lack of one Ro-Ro terminal, insufficient exploitation of the existing ports, aged fleet and vessels, insufficient infrastructure for vessels supply, then it is clear why Serbia has not moved for a decade when it comes to intensifying of goods turnover ad transit traffic through our country.

However, when it comes to technical-technological organization and IT sector, Jevtic mentioned that, due to increased number of foreign companies arriving, there is a request for implementation of new standards and implementation of required logistics principles. He claims that the qualitative and quantitative leap has been obvious within the last eight years. These requests generated development of the whole industry of providing logistics services. He said that local businesses realize the importance of the implementation of the same principles and that they are starting implementation thus contributing to their own development and development of the overall activity. Jevtic also mentioned that there is a lack of educated staff for operational activities in this field since curriculum is not adapted to modern logistics needs. Apart from this, there is a large deficit of professional experience.

When it comes to the situation with respect to the intermodal transport development in Serbia, non-existing or insufficiently developed infrastructure of intermodal transport in Serbia was pointed out and the special danger for the country is hazardous substances overloading.

Disharmony of local standards and technical regulations with the international standards and non-existence of quality statistical parameters should be included here.

High potential of the port in Pancevo

A guest from Germany, Dr. Rüdiger Ostrowski, the President of the VSL, one of the largest European associations for transport and logistics from the German province Nordrhein-Westfalen also referred to the last item in his presentation. Seven years ago, the association developed a pre-feasibility study of multimodal transport chain at the relation North Sea (port in Amsterdam and Rotterdam through which overseas goods is delivered to Europe) – Rheine-Mein-Danube-Black Sea where, due to lack of statistical information in the country, they encountered problem referring to Serbia.

The base of the project is to define alternative roads in current road transport which is more and more overloaded and endangered by trucks. One of the alternatives, it was stated in the Study, is intensifying of combined railway-river transport of containers at the mentioned relation. Even then it was advised the capacities of the port Belgrade to be dislocated at the nearby location of the Pancevo port which has higher development potential and land and to keep the so-called White fleet in Belgrade for tourist purposes only.

This way, Belgrade would solve a large deal of transport traffic which is currently passing through the city center, it would rapidly decrease environmental and accidental danger due to overloading and hazardous material transport and the city would, at the same time, get new, potential to breathe and re-initiate construction sector in its most attractive part.

Morava-Vardar Canal has no realistic grounds

At the conference, the Morava-Vardar Canal project was mentioned in a reply to a question asked by the moderator. German experts believe it does not have any realistic grounds for a number of reasons.

Apart from the two mentioned associates, Mioljub Risojevic form the German SGS Beograd company, who spoke about the international certification for logistics companies in Serbia and Veselin Milosevic, assistant director of the Customs administration, Customs operations and international customs cooperation Department, were noted for their presentations.

Milosevic spoke about kinds of simplification and speeding up of the customs process implemented by the Customs administration. He pointed out they can be used by both local and foreign companies operating in our customs area and he paid special attention to house customs. Speaking about advantages house customs enables, he mentioned a large number of companies, as well as the most famous ones, which carry out customs operations in our region this way. This includes Vrsac-based Hemofarm Stada, Zrenjanin-based Draxmaier Automotive, Nis-based Philip Morris Operations, Belgrade-based Ball Packaging, Prokuplje-based Leoni Wiring Systems Southeast, Becej-based Linde Gas Srbija, etc.

Serbia, unfortunately, has not yet become a part of the European intermodal network (apart form some transit routes which pass through Serbia) and we do not know when this will be the case. The conference showed that countries and numerous companies from the north of Europe are interested in progress, modernization, capacity expansion on Pan-European corridors 7 and 10. The near future will show whether Serbia will realize that as well before everybody starts avoiding us.