Bosnia's Serb Republic Govt To Fund Trebinje Airport Project if Concession Option Fails

“If there is no concessionaire, the government of the Serb Republic will use own funds to start the construction of the runway and the necessary infrastructure,” Serb Republic Prime Minister Milorad Dodik said in a statement posted on the government's website on Thursday.

The airport will be built near the town of Trebinje, some 20 kilometres northeast of the Adriatic resort town of Dubrovnik in neighbouring Croatia. It will be the fifth airport in Bosnia, which was divided into a Serb Republic and a Muslim-Croat Federation after the 1992-1995 war.

The plan is to concession off the construction of the airport runway while the government should take care of the land and infrastructure, Transport and Communications Minister Nedeljko Cubrilovic was quoted as saying in the statement.

The statement gave no further details on the government's concession plans for the project.

The first phase of the project, which will enable incoming and outgoing aircraft traffic, will cost between 55 million and 60 million marka ($41.5-$45.2 million/28.1-30.7 million euro), Dodik said.

The airport should be built in three phases. The annual capacity of 250,000 passengers planned for the first phase should double during the second phase, eventually reaching one million passengers per year in the last phase.

Two separate studies done by an Austrian and a Belgrade-based company have confirmed the viability of the project, Dodik said.

The government decided at its regular session on Thursday to allocate 1.6 million marka to prepare the project documents and settle land ownership issues, the statement also said. The design project should be ready by April 2010.

The Trebinje airport will have the longest runway in Bosnia at 3,000 metres and will be able to service all types of flights except intercontinental routes, the Serb Republic government has said earlier.

There is currently one airport in the Serb Republic, in Banja Luka, and three in the Federation: in Sarajevo, Mostar and Tuzla.

(1 euro=1.95583 Bosnian marka)