Yugoslavia - Infrastructure, power, and communications

Serbia enjoys a central location in the Balkans, but the loss of markets and economic sanctions and NATO's (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) bombardment in 1999 devastated the transportation and communications sector; billions of dollars are needed for repair and modernization.

In 1997, the road network included 50,414 kilometers (31,326 miles) of roads (55 percent paved), with 380 kilometers (237 miles) of expressways, and 171 kilometers (106 miles) of semi-expressways. There were 4,031 kilometers (2,505 miles) of railroad tracks. Harbors on Montenegro's coast and at Belgrade serve as shipping centers, and plans to clear debris from the Danube left

Communications
Country	Newspapers	Radios	TV Sets a	Cable subscribers a	Mobile Phones a	Fax Machines a	Personal Computers a	Internet Hosts b	Internet Users b
	1996	1997	1998	1998	1998	1998	1998	1999	1999
Yugoslavia	107	297	259	N/A	23	1.9	18.8	7.65	80
United States	215	2,146	847	244.3	256	78.4	458.6	1,508.77	74,100
Russia	105	418	420	78.5	5	0.4	40.6	13.06	2,700
Romania	300	319	233	119.2	29	N/A	10.2	9.01	600
a Data are from International Telecommunication Union, World Telecommunication Development Report 1999 and are per 1,000 people.
b Data are from the Internet Software Consortium ( http://www.isc.org ) and are per 10,000 people.
SOURCE: World Bank. World Development Indicators 2000.

by the bombing campaign will make trade along the river active again. The national airline, JAT, operates out of international airports in Belgrade and Podgorica, but under the 1992-1995 embargo , flights to Yugoslavia were banned, and the bombing of 1999 caused damage to civilian airports.

Before 1999, the country was self-sufficient in electricity from coal and hydropower. The sector is dominated by the state-owned monopolies of Serbia and Montenegro. The bombing in 1999 destroyed or damaged 14 power stations and 2 major oil refineries.

In 1997, the purchase of a 49 percent share of the Serbian Telecommunications Company PTT by the Italian company Stet and Greece's OTE pumped nearly US$1 billion into the budget. War and sanctions delayed modernization, but this has led to fast mobile telephone growth. Access to the Internet was introduced in 1997, and there are about 100,000 registered users and 150,000 personal computers.