The Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC) of BiH announced a public tender for drafting of project documentation based on which will be built the Adriatic-Ionian motorway, part of which will pass through BiH, thus state institutions made the first big step towards the revival of this great infrastructure project.
The Adriatic-Ionian motorway, whose construction is expected to start before 2020, has special importance, almost equal to the importance of Corridor 5C.
First of all, because it will be passing through five, maybe even seven countries, it will connect the South Europe with Central and Western Europe, enable stronger development of seaports in several countries, and certainly because of open possibilities of its connection to the “Silk Road” through Turkey, all the way to China! Ministry secured about 4.4 million BAM for technical project documentation, but, according to them, we will know the details in the summer of next year.
“The documentation should be completed by mid-2017, when we will get concrete facts, such as the best route, required time of construction, the total cost of the project, and the degree of viability and feasibility of the project,” as announced from the Ministry. They further stated that they are “only at the beginning of the study of technical, economic, social, financial and environmental studies of feasibility sustainability of the project.”
“The task of the selected consultant will be the preparation of technical studies, missing spatial planning documents, variants of conceptual design with multi-criteria analysis, previous studies of environmental impact, traffic studies and the previous feasibility studies, according to the needs of the contracting authority and the funds that are available in the budget. It should be noted that the Council of Ministers of BiH adopted a conclusion to build this highway through a public-private partnership, which, of course, includes the possibility of using EU funds,” as stated from the Ministry.
Route along which that motorway would pass through BiH is: Pocitelj – Neum – Trebinje – border with Montenegro, and the key issue in terms of determining the route is detailing.
“On the terrain, where the motorway would pass, there would not be a lot of expropriation, but the fact is that this is a difficult terrain, with a lot of tunnels and viaducts. It means that the price would be about 20 million BAM per linear kilometer,” said Seval Kovacevic, expert and a certified court expert of traffic engineering.
According to this calculation, the highway that would connect BiH on its south with the rest of the developed world, as well as the south Greece with Central and Western Europe, would cost about 2.280 billion BAM, and we would be able to withdraw good part of the funds from the EU funds, but also “through” Croatia, which is a member of the EU, and has a great interest in this large project.
(Source: akta.ba)