May 15 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's Europe-2022 consortium, which includes two units of civil engineering group Glavbolgarstroy, started work on a 267 million levs ($148.5 million/136.5 million euro) contract to build the final part of the Europe motorway, which links Sofia to the Kalotina checkpoint on the border with Serbia, the regional development ministry said.
The length of the section is 16.5 km, with Europe-2022 due to initially build a 6 km part, for which a construction permit was issued last month, the ministry said in a press release on Friday. Lands for the remaining 10.5 km part of the motorway section are expected to be alienated within a month and a construction permit issued in the next four to six weeks.
The Europe-2022 consortium is made up of GBS-Infrastructure construction, Glavbolgarstroy International and local company Obonato Build. Another consortium, called Europe, has been awarded the 5.6 million levs construction supervision contract. That investor group comprises Bulgarian companies Patinvest-Engineering, Stroynorm and R G Konsulting.
The entire motorway should be ready within 18 months, caretaker regional development minister Ivan Shishkov said. He added that the start of the construction process had been crucial to prevent the loss of EU structural funding.
The Europe motorway connecting Sofia to Kalotina is part of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T).
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)