EBRD Chips in for Bosnia Motorway

“The project will promote further reform in the infrastructure sector, helping to attract private investors,” Sue Barrett, director for transport at EBRD, said in the statement. “Upon its completion, the new motorway will considerably reduce the current level of heavy traffic on existing routes.”

The funding will be used for construction of the Mahovljani Interchange, the 'missing link' in the new Banja Luka-Gradiska motorway, which is being built with funding from both EBRD and the European Investment Bank.

The motorway is linking Bosnia’s second largest city, Banja Luka, with the Croatian border to the north and with the pan-European transport network.

The Mahovljani Interchange project includes the construction of a new 1.8-kilometer two-lane motorway; four interchange two-lane slip roads, with a total length of 6.9 kilometer; two viaducts, which carry two of the slip roads over the new motorway; and four other bridges within the interchange.

In addition to the EBRD loan, the project is co-financed by a 5-million-euro grant from the European Commission's pre-accession program and a half million euros from its Central European Initiative and the Western Balkans Investment Framework

The EBRD loan will be extended to the Republika Srpska Motorways, a newly established public company responsible for managing the motorway network in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity of Republika Srpska.

So far, EBRD has invested more than 328 million euros in the road sector in Bosnia, with total commitments in the country exceeding 1 billion euros.