SARAJEVO (Bosnia and Herzegovina), December 4 (SeeNews) – Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat Federation government said it would open on Tuesday a 7.6-kilometre stretch of a motorway between the capital Sarajevo and the central town of Zenica, worth 30.98 million marka ($23.22 million/15.85 million euro).
The stretch is located along the European Union-defined corridor Vc, which links the Hungarian capital Budapest with the Croatian Adriatic port of Ploce and runs 320 km north-to-south across Bosnia.
After the section is put into operation, the total length of the motorway between Sarajevo and Zenica will reach 28 kilometres, out of a total distance of 85 kilometres, the government said in a statement.
A total of 18.22 million marka, which is the bigger portion of the project’s cost, went for bridge construction. Croatia hired as contractor for the bridge construction works a consortium of domestic companies ZGP Sarajevo and Hidrogradnja. Another domestic consortium comprising GP Put Sarajevo, Asfaltgradnja Vares and Integral Inzenjering is the road construction works contractor.
The Muslim-Croat Federation is one of the two autonomous parts of war-divided Bosnia. The other is the Serb Republic.
Building a motorway along the Bosnian section of corridor Vc is Bosnia’s biggest post-war infrastructure project, for which the country’s has still not found adequate financing. A government feasibility study has shown the motorway will cost 7.39 billion marka and will need to be financed through the state budget, public-private partnerships, commercial lending and the international financial institutions.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bosnian marka)