April 3 (SeeNews) - The Montenegrin government has allocated 90 million euro ($97 million), or 38% of the total capital budget, for the construction of the 21-kilometre Matesevo-Andrijevica section of the Bar-Boljare motorway in 2024, the finance ministry said.
The Bar-Boljare motorway will link Montenegro's Adriatic cost to the country's border with Serbia in the north. It is part of European transport Corridor XI, a ferry/motorway corridor linking Italy's Bari to Romania's Bucharest via the port of Bar and Serbia's Belgrade.
Montenegro's overall capital budget for 2024 amounts to 240 million euro and is intended to support 332 projects of total estimated value of 2.8 billion euro, the finance ministry said in a report of the first-quarter capital budget execution published on Tuesday.
The largest portion of this year's capital budget, amounting to 155 million euro, has been allocated to support projects of the government's transport administration. Out of this allocation, 90 million euro have been designated for the construction of the Matesevo-Andrijevica section. The transport administration will use the remaining 65 million euro to support an additional 77 projects.
The government in Podgorica plans to launch in June the tender for the construction of Matesevo-Andrijevica. It is about to launch a pre-qualification procedure for the project soon.
In March, prime minister Milojko Spajic said that the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) plans to approve a loan of 200 million euro towards the Matesevo-Andrijevica project. According to earlier estimates, the preliminary value of the project is seen at 600 million euro.
The Matesevo-Andrijevica stretch is the second section of the 129-km Bar-Boljare motorway that Montenegro will build. In July 2022, Montenegro opened the first section of the motorway, the 41-km Smokovac-Matesevo stretch, which was built by China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC). In January, the government opened a tender for the preparation of a preliminary design for the construction of the third section, the 50-km Andrijevica-Boljare stretch.
($ = 0.930 euro)