The nine companies, including Austria's Strabag AG, Power Construction Corporation of China (PCCC), Turkish firms Dogus and Cengiz, Azerbaijan's Azvirt, China's Shandong Hi-Speed Group (SDHS), N. Macedonia's Gradjevinski Institut Makedonija (GIM), China Communications Construction Company (CCCC), and a company called Baybnet Group sent their representatives to participate in a clarification meeting on the tender, organised by Monteput in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica, Monteput said in a statement last week when the meeting was held.
The prequalification tender for design and construction of the Matesevo-Andrijevica section of the Bar-Boljere motorway was published in April on the website of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). It will be carried out in two stages, with a pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ) being the initial evaluation stage, the EBRD has said. The tender deadline expires on June 23.
In April, the EBRD said Monteput intends to use part of the proceeds of a 200 million euro ($217 million) EBRD loan towards the cost of the project, whose total value is estimated at 530 million euro.
In March, the ruling party Europe Now (PES) of Montenegro's prime minister Milojko Spajic said the country will receive a 200 million euro grant from the European Commission for the project, which is the largest single grant so far in the country's history.
Spajic has said earlier the implementation of the Matesevo-Andrijevica project is expected to start at the end of 2024 or the beginning of 2025, which is a year and a half ahead of plan.
The Bar-Boljare highway is part of European transport Corridor XI, a ferry/highway corridor linking Italy's Bari to Romania's Bucharest via the port of Bar and Serbia's Belgrade.
The Matesevo-Andrijevica stretch is the second section of the 129-km Bar-Boljare motorway that Montenegro will build. In July 2022, the country opened the first section of the motorway, the 41-km Smokovac-Matesevo stretch, which was built by China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC). Earlier in May, Monteput said the Monte-Tim consortium of Serbian and Montenegrin firms had won the tender for the preparation of a preliminary design for the construction of the third section, the 50-km Andrijevica-Boljare stretch.
