By the end of June, the realization of payments for the National Football Stadium under construction in Surčin reached 0.21 percent, while this year’s budget for all significant infrastructure projects reached 23.05 percent, according to data from the Ministry of Finance on budget execution, reported by Nova Ekonomija.
This media outlet states that, according to the official website Serbia2027.gov.rs, the deadline for the construction of this stadium is the end of 2026, that it will have a seating capacity of 52,000, and that its construction was supposed to begin in April 2024.
Although the foundation stone for the stadium was laid on May 1, 2024, the construction permit for the first phase of the stadium’s construction was only obtained in the second half of August 2024.
Previously, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said at the end of April that the works on the National Stadium were four months behind schedule.
As he announced then, the plan was to make up for two months of delays during the summer by working in three shifts and “now we are looking at where to make up for another two months so that we can finish everything, because we planned for the grand opening (of the specialized exhibition Expo 2027) to be at the largest and most beautiful stadium.”
In addition to the delayed stadium, 31.06 percent of the planned budget for this year has been executed for buildings and construction facilities within Expo 2027, and 24.49 percent of the budget has been executed for land expropriation for the construction of capital projects.
Nenad Ivanišević, an associate professor at the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Belgrade, with the caveat that he is not directly familiar with this project, stated that “some problems can be discerned” when information about the expenditure of planned funds is cross-referenced with other data.
“I would say that the stadium project is in trouble because less than one percent has been done so far,” Ivanišević told Nova Ekonomija.
He also notes that initial works such as foundations and reinforcements are usually cheaper than final and more demanding works (so the percentage of money spent so far does not necessarily equal the percentage of work performed), but that without a proper plan for the pace of execution, “we cannot truly know what is happening.”
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Source: Nova ekonomija, Photo: Printscreen/YT/Beobuild.rs