October 4 (SeeNews) - Serbia's government said on Wednesday it plans to invest 212 million euro ($249.6 million) in the construction of the Nis-Plocnik section of a 77 km motorway connecting the city of Nis to Merdare, in southern Serbia, and plans to launch the project in 2018.
The process of expropriation of land for the construction of the motorway will start in November, infrastructure minister Zorana Mihajlovic said on the sidelines of a meeting with the head of the European Investment Bank (EIB) Regional Representation for the Western Balkans, Dubravka Negre, as quoted in a statement by the government.
The construction of the motorway, to be financed by the Western Balkans Investment Framework (WBIF), will facilitate the connection of Serbia to the Adriatic coast and has a crucial importance for supporting the Serb community in Kosovo, Mihajlovic said.
The financing of the project has still not been agreed, but EIB will support the efforts of the Serbian government to receive the largest possible part of it in the form of a grant, Negre said in a separate statement by the infrastructure ministry on Wednesday.
The project also includes the construction of a bypass road in Prokuplje as the existing infrastructure is not good enough to assume the expected traffic, Negre noted.
In August, Mihajlovic said the Nis-Merdare-Pristina motorway is expected to cost a total of 850 million euro. The motorway, which is part of a bigger project stretching to Albania's capital Tirana and the Adriatic port of Durres, is planned to be completed by 2020.
($=0.8493 euro)