Bulgaria‘s President Rumen Radev and his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic are taking part at the inaugural ceremony for the construction of the Bulgaria-Serbia Gas Interconnection (IBS) on Bulgarian territory. The interconnector linking the towns of Novi Iskar in Bulgaria and Nis in Serbia will have a total lenght of 170 kilometers, of which 62 km will be on Bulgarian territory. Its capacity will be up to 1.8 billion cubic meters of gas per year and will allow a reverse flow. 

The construction of the Serbian section started one year ago and is expected to be completed in the autumn of 2023. The Bulgarian section is also expected to be completed by the end of this year. The gas interconnector is a project of common interest for the European Union and is under the Connecting Europe Facility.

 "Bulgaria has proven to be a reliable transit country and even in the most difficult situation, when our country was left without Russian gas, it continued to export natural gas to Serbia smoothly," President Rumen Radev said after the meeting with his Serbian counterpart Vucic.