BELGRADE (Serbia), September 2 (SeeNews) - Serbia expects a consortium of US civil engineering group Bechtel and Turkey's Enka to start the construction of the Morava Corridor motorway that will link European transport Corridors X and XI on the country's territory later this month, infrastructure minister Zorana Mihajlovic said.

The government plans to sign a commercial agreement for the project with the consortium in the next 15 days, Mihajlovic said in a press release on Sunday.

The consortium will complete the construction of the motorway within a period of two and a half years and will use Serbian subcontractors, Mihajlovic said.

Last month, the infrastructure ministry said the Bechtel-Enka consortium has placed the sole binding bid the tender for construction of the Morava Corridor motorway.

Serbia plans to invest 800 million euro ($879 million) in the project, Mihajlovic said in May.

The 112 km-long motorway will feature four lanes 15 metres in width each, two emergency lanes 5 metres in width each, 84 bridges and 29 level crossings.

Corridor X will connect Salzburg in Austria to the Greek port of Thessaloniki, passing through Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia. Corridor XI is a ferry/motorway corridor linking Italy's Bari to Romania's Bucharest via Montenegro's Bar port and Serbia's Belgrade.

($ = 0.91028 euro)