Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications Rasim Ljajić has signed early today an agreement on strategic partnership with the Chinese company “Huawei” emphasizing that Serbian plan is to ensure that every citizen has the access to the internet speed of 30 mbps and the internet speed of 100 mbps for at least 50 per cent of the households in Serbia.

“That is a pretty ambitious, maybe from this point of view an unrealistic objective but we believe that it is achievable, if we presume that we will do everything before us, which is to ensure adequate base infrastructure”, said Mr Ljajić after signing the agreement.

Having in mind the value of the project of construction of the base infrastructure of broadband internet between 800 million and one billion euros, and the fact that a major part of it refers to the construction of the infrastructure in rural, distant areas, Mr Ljajić has said that the Government sees Huawei as the most important partner and that it is ready to talk about different models of participation of that company.

He has stressed that the Government has no funds and is searching for a relevant model. “We have some examples that some countries did the entire network, some provided subsidies for big companies to do their own network, and we will probably combine the models in order to save the money and ensure the objective to be realised. Our objective is that every citizen has the internet speed of 30 mbps by 2020”, Minister has stressed.

Mr Ljajić has added that the construction of the infrastructure will ensure it, and that the reforms and modernisation of public administration cannot be possible without a fast internet. He particularly emphasized the assessment of the World Bank, stating that the increase of the number of connections by 10 per cent will ensure a growth in GDP by 1.38 per cent, and somewhere even by 2.5 per cent.

Minister has reminded that in early 20th century constructions of motorways was the core of the fast economic development, of trade, economy and that in this century it is replaced by the construction of infrastructure in the field of telecommunications, construction of that “parallel world” compared to the real one.

“We have the existing resources, which is 6.000 km of optical fibres which exist but are not used and are owned by various state institutions, public enterprises. This must be put into function of development of national broadband network”, Deputy PM has said.

He has added that in the real life there are motorways but they do not mean much to those living in villages, since they must be provided with asphalt roads reaching every single village, settlement and the same applies to the digital world, and that based on those “optical motorways” we need to construction access networks, from the motorways to every single household, reaching the most distant villages in Serbia.

“This is why this agreement we are signing with Huawei is important. Today, we participate in the fourth industrial revolution which is nothing but a technological revolution. We have missed all the three, taking our last train. I think that we can catch up with this last one, technological revolution and here we see Huawei and China as very important partners”, Mr Ljajić concluded.