Serbia repays early 173 mln euro debt to Azerbaijan

Serbia has repaid early a 172.7 million euro ($210 million) outstanding debt to Azerbaijan under a loan to construct a Corridor XI road section, finance minister Sinisa Mali said.

Report informs, citing Serbian press, that the government has repaid the debt using proceeds from the sale of its 83.23% shareholding interest in blue-chip lender Komercijalna Banka to Slovenia's Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB) for 394.7 million euro.

"In this way, we saved the citizens of Serbia 25.9 million euro in interest that they would have paid by 2027," Mali noted.

Last month, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic stressed that the debt repayment would reduce Serbia's public debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio by 0.42 percentage points to 58.5%.

Serbia agreed to receive a 300 million euro loan from the Azeri government for the construction of the Preljina-Ljig section of Corridor XI in 2012. Azeri construction company Azvirt carried out the plan works.