SKOPJE (Macedonia), September 22 (SeeNews) – Macedonia will call a tender by the end of the year for the upgrade of a railway track in the country’s east, part of pan-European transport Corridor VIII, under the second phase of a three-stage project, the government in Skopje said.
Works are expected to start in September 2015, Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said in a statement on Sunday.
The second phase of the project includes the 34 kilometers (km) Beljakovce - Kriva Palanka section and is estimated to cost 144 million euro, the transport ministry said earlier.
Macedonia launched the upgrade of the first railway section, Kumanovo-Beljakovce, with a length of 30.8 kilometers, part of pan-European transport Corridor VIII, in March under a project worth some 50 million euro ($64 million).
In eastern Macedonia, Corridor VIII includes one more railway section - from Kriva Palanka to the Bulgarian border with a length of 24 kilometers, which is estimated at 360 million euro, the transport ministry said earlier.
Corridor VIII, with a total length of 586 km, runs from the southern Italian ports of Bari and Brindisi, through Albania and Macedonia to the Bulgarian Black Sea ports of Burgas and Varna.
($=0.7760 euro)