February 16 (SeeNews) - The construction of the 550 million euro ($668.2 million) Peljesac bridge in southern Croatia is expected to be completed in 2022, prime minister Andrej Plenkovic said.
The bridge sections should be connected by the end of the year, while the completion of the access roads is expected by June 2022, Plenkovic said in a statement on Monday.
The project is co-financed by the European Union with 357 million euro.
The construction of the Peljesac bridge started in July 2018 after Croatian road operator Hrvatske Ceste (HC) signed a 2.08 billion kuna deal for the works with a Chinese consortium led by China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC).
The bridge will connect the Peljesac peninsula to the rest of mainland Croatia over the Adriatic, providing an alternative route to crossing the Neum Corridor - a strip of the coastline situated in Bosnia and Herzegovina between these two parts of Croatia. The Peljesac bridge will be 55 metres high and 2.4 kilometres long, with four lanes.
In October 2019, Croatia signed two deals worth some 990 million kuna in total, hiring Austria's Strabag and Greece's Avax for the construction of the access roads to the bridge.
($ = 0.8231 euro)