July 5 (SeeNews) - The European Union and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) are jointly providing a 930 million euro ($1.05 billion) financing package for the construction of Corridor Vc in Bosnia, local media reported.
The head of the EU delegation to Bosnia, Lars-Gunnar Wigemark, said that the EU has earmarked a total of 110 million euro for the construction of the eight planned sections of the corridor in the country, state news agency Srna reported earlier this week.
Wigemark was speaking during his visit to the recently started works on the 5.65 km Johovac - Rudanka section, the first stretch of Corridor Vc to be built in Bosnia's Serb Republic. He said that for this section alone the EU has provided some 15 million euro of non-refundable financing.
Wigermak paid the visit to the construction site along with officials from the Serb Republic government and the head of the EBRD office in Bosnia, Ian Brown.
Brown said that EBRD's overall credit arrangements for Corridor Vc projects in Bosnia total 820 million euro.
Last month, road company Autoputevi Republike Srpske launched the construction of the Johovac - Rudanka section after hiring Bosnian civil engineering company Integral Inzenjering and North Macedonia's Granit to carry out the 62.5 million euro works.
The part of Corridor Vc on the territory of the Serb Republic will be 46.6 kilometres long, from the town of Doboj to Vukosavlje, and will cost some 500 million euro.
The best part of Corridor Vc in Bosnia lies in the Federation, which together with the Serb Republic makes up Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The second section of the corridor in the Serb Republic, from the Rudanka loop to Karusa, on the Serb Republic's southern border, is some 6 kilometres in length. The third section, some 13 km in length, will stretch from the Johovac loop to the Podnovlje loop, while the fourth and final section, some 23 kilometres in length, will connect Vukosavlje to the Podnovlje loop.
Corridor Vc is the main international transport corridor in Bosnia and its development is a strategic priority for the country. The motorway is part of the Western Balkans Core Network. It has been established as an extension of the Trans-European Transport Networks and will eventually link the Hungarian capital Budapest to the Croatian Adriatic port of Ploce.
($= 0.887402 euro)