September 11 (SeeNews) - Croatia and Bosnia will launch the construction of a cross-border bridge over the Sava river, near the Bosnian town of Gradiska, in the middle of October, local media reported.
Construction works will start once a supervisor for them has been selected, Bosnian news daily Nezavisne Novine quoted officials from Bosnia's transport ministry as saying on Tuesday. The tender procedure for choosing the supervisor is in its final stage, the officials said.
Bosnia and Croatia have launched two separate tenders for the project, with Croatia in charge of hiring a contractor for the construction works and Bosnia searching for a supervisor.
In July, Croatian motorways operator Hrvatske Ceste signed a contract with a consortium comprising Bosnia's Integral Inzenjering and Croatia's Djuro Djakovic Montaza and Zagreb Montaza for the construction of the bridge.
The project will cost an estimated 19.5 million euro ($21.5 million) without VAT, or 23.5 million euro including VAT. Construction works on the bridge are expected to be completed within 30 months after their launch.
The four-lane bridge will be 426 metres long and 22.6 metres wide.
The construction of the bridge represents the first stage of a project to build a 20 km motorway section between the Croatian village of Okucani and the country's border with Bosnia. The section will be part of a motorway stretching from Croatia's border with Hungary in the north to the border with Bosnia border in the south.
In Bosnia, the motorway section will be linked to the Gradiska-Banja Luka motorway, making up the so-called Trans-European Corridor E661.
The project is part of the Indicative Extension of the TEN-T (Trans-European Transport) Core Network in the Western Balkans.
($=0.908760 euro)