Govt to call new tender for Budapest-Belgrade railway upgrade

Hungary's government has decided to launch a new public procurement procedure for the upgrade of the Hungarian section of the Budapest-Belgrade railway line, as the estimated cost of the project has increased by about 10 percent, MTI learnt on Wednesday. The projected cost of upgrading the 152-km section between Budapest and Kelebia, on the border with Serbia, was 578 billion forints (EUR 1.79bn) in May 2018, but the best offer made since then has been 693 billion forints. As the government is unwilling to shoulder a cost overshoot, it has launched a new public procurement procedure. As a consequence, construction will only start in 2020, a year later than originally scheduled.