Tokyo: A visit to Yokohama by officials of the Secretariat for Public Transport of the City of Belgrade with the team of the Japanese Agency for International Cooperation

Representatives of the Secretariat for Public Transport of the City of Belgrade had a ten-day training course in Yokohama, as part of the three-year technical cooperation project with the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) aimed at modernisation of the public transport of the City of Belgrade (PROMOD). The training programme in Japan was crowned by a visit to the Serbian Embassy in Tokyo, where participants shared their impressions of the visit and training in Japan with Ambassador Aleksandra Kovač.

Ambassador Kovač thanked the JICA representatives for their continuous commitment and long-term fruitful cooperation in the implementation of numerous projects, with the involvement of the JICA Office for Balkans. Ambassador Kovač spoke about the quality results achieved through the visits of the JICA volunteers to Serbia.

Ambassador Kovač emphasised the symbolic importance of the so-called yellow buses provided by the Republic of Japan in 2002 as a grant, which are still in use in public transport in Belgrade. She stated that with a rapid expansion of the city and population growth, it is a challenge to maintain the optimal level of public transport in accordance with real needs. After welcoming the participants, she concluded that this type of training, along with the possibility of visiting Japan, ensures a realistic understanding of the advantages of other systems and the degree of their applicability in domestic settings.