Raz Hopes Sufficient Funds Will Be Preserved for Roads after Consolidation

Senica, 27 August (TASR) - I hope that the consolidation measures for 2026 will preserve enough funds for road maintenance and necessary investments, Transport Minister Jozef Raz (a Smer-SD nominee) told a briefing following an away-from-home session of the government in Senica (Trnava region) on Wednesday. "I'm not a member of the coalition council, but I hope there will be enough funds left for necessary maintenance and key investments. Fortunately, the entire D3 highway project, with all of its three sections, is still being financed by EU funds, so we don't have a problem there," he said. "The Turany-Hubova section - when we manage to award the contract - will have to be designed first. However, these are relatively minimal expenditures. The big expenditures for this section will come in later years, and I believe that, by then, Slovakia will be doing better," added Raz. According to him, rail projects are fully financed from EU funds, including the purchase of new carriages and locomotives. As regards investment resources, he hopes to continue to rely on alternative forms of funding. This applies to the public-private partnership scheme for bridges, which is developing quite well, he said. "I believe that we'll manage to conclude this successfully. Once that happens, we'll have accomplished what we wanted, which means that the construction projects in Slovakia will have a positive impact on gross domestic product without spending money from the state treasury," he added. Touching on problems with staffing on the railways, Raz said that automation is the only solution for some professions that are dying out. "We need to focus on gradually replacing people with automatic systems," he stated. jrg/df