SOFIA (Bulgaria), November 9 (SeeNews) – The European Commission has approved 628 million levs ($373 million/321 million euro) financing for construction of 40 km of Bulgaria’s Struma motorway, part of pan-European transport Corridor IV, the country's transport ministry said Thursday.
The financing will go towards the cost of construction of the motorway stretches between the towns of Kresna and Sandanski, between Blagoevgrad and Krupnik, as well as the design and construction of Zheleznitsa road tunnel, the transport ministry said in a statement.
The three projects will be financed under the EU's Operational Programme Transport and Transport Infrastructure 2014-2020.
Construction of the Blagoevgrad – Krupnik section began on August 31, while nearly half of the works on the section between Kresna and Sandanski have already been completed, according to the statement.
Last month, Bulgaria opened a new tender for design and construction of Zheleznitsa road tunnel, a project with an indicative value of 250 million levs.
The initial tender procedure for the construction of Zheleznitsa tunnel was cancelled in April because the National Company Strategic Infrastructure Projects had misinformed the candidates that they could place offers higher than the indicative value of the project, Pirin Penchev, the head of the Road Infrastructure Agency, said at the time.
The procedure was relaunched in September but in October it was cancelled for a second time, due to changes in the technical criteria for the selection of offers.
The Struma motorway, with a total length of 173.28 km, is part of pan-European transport Corridor IV, linking Bulgaria's capital Sofia with Kulata crossing on the border with Greece. Its construction is divided into four sections, of which three are completed: Dolna Dikanya – Dupnitsa, Dupnitsa – Blagoevgrad, and Sandanski-Kulata. The fourth section, linking Blagoevgrad with Sandanski, remains to be built.
(1 euro=1.95583 levs)