BELGRADE (Serbia), January 6 (SeeNews) - Serbian state-run railway infrastructure operator Infrastruktura Zeleznice Srbije said it signed a 23.8 million euro ($25.2 million) contract for the reconstruction of a railway line with China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC).

The Chinese company will be in charge of the modernisation of the 7.5 km-long Rasputnica G - Rakovica - Resnik section of the Belgrade-Nis line for a period of 351 days, Infrastruktura Zeleznice Srbije said in a statement on Thursday.

The works will begin in mid-February, but if the weather conditions are bad the start of the project will be delayed until the end of next month or the beginning of March, the managing director of Infrastruktura Zeleznice Srbije, Dusan Garibovic, said in the statement.

The project is financed through a 95 million euro loan granted to Serbian state-run railway operator Zeleznice Srbije by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in 2012.

The section to be upgraded is part of Pan-European Corridor X that is projected to connect Austria's Salzburg to Greece's Thessaloniki.

Last month, Infrastruktura Zeleznice Srbije said it plans to almost triple its annual investments to 640 million euro in 2017 from 215 million euro in 2016, in order to reconstruct railways with a total length of 275 km.

Infrastruktura Zeleznice Srbije was established as a joint stock company in 2015 as a part of restructuring implemented in railway operator Zeleznice Srbije which saw the uncoupling of the different business lines into separate companies.

($ = 0.9441 euro)