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Kosovo’s New Highway – 'The Most Expensive in Region'
Pristina | 01 February 2010 | By Lavdim Hamidi
Opposition parties and experts accuse Kosovo’s government of agreeing too high a price for the new Vermice-Merdare highway, and diverting the route to benefit senior officials.
The decision to appoint US-Turkish consortium Bechtel-Enka to build Kosovo’s biggest ever infrastructure project has drawn harsh criticism from opposition parties and experts.
Kosovo’s ministry of transport announced last week that the firm behind the Albanian phase of the ‘Patriotic Highway’ would also build the 117km-route in Kosovo at a cost of 7.5 to 8 million euro a kilometre. The new road will link Vermice, on the Albanian border, with Merdare, the Serbian border crossing in eastern Kosovo.
But no overall cost has been agreed between the two parties, raising fears that the huge overspend which occurred in Albania could be repeated on the other side of the border.
The Ministry of Transport has also supported the company’s proposal to divert the highway away from a tricky 22km section around Suhareke/Suva Reka, in south west Kosovo.
“With the diversion of the highway that the winning company has proposed we will save about 400 million euro,” said Adem Grabovci, deputy minister of transport.
But some representatives of opposition parties question why the road is being diverted to Malisheve/Malisevo, which is west of Pristina and the home of Minister of Transport Fatmir Limaj.
“Why the diversion is being made through Malisheve is unclear for us. Is this diversion about attracting cheaper prices or about going towards Fatmir Limaj’s fields?” said Avni Arifi, a member of the opposition Alliance for the Future of Kosovo’s presidency.
Myzejene Selmani, chairwoman of the parliamentary commission on economy and transport and a member of the opposition New Kosovo Alliance, says that the price per kilometre is ‘astronomical’.
“This price is astronomical because it is not to build a highway through the Alps, but through a flat country and not at all difficult for construction,” Selmani told Balkan Insight.
She said that while Switzerland paid 5.6 million euro a kilometre, in Kosovo the cost averaged 8 million euro.
Experts say that a kilometer of highway in Macedonia costs 6 million euro, including expropriations, while in Albania, because of the difficult mountainous terrain, the cost of its new highway was around 6.4 million euro per kilometre.
Deputy ministry of transport Adem Grabovci dismisses the criticism of the deal offered by Bechtel-Enka. He said: “The price offered by the winning company was cheaper than other company.
“Perhaps the reason for the cheap price is that this consortium has all the necessary machinery in Albania, where the highway is built, so it does not have to spend large amounts on transportation.”
Former minister of transport Qemajl Ahmeti revealed that an expert assessment during his term estimated the total cost of the highway, including expropriation, was 659 million euro.
He said the Bechtel-Enka deal is likely to cost Kosovo 1 billion euro.
The Ministry of Transport has said that the construction of the highway will be paid for through soft loans from various international financial institutions, but have not provided any more detail on the matter.
2010-02-04 13:03:50