- Published: 15.07.2015.
PM Milanovic: Peljesac bridge will be built for sure
The Peljesac bridge has been assessed in a feasibility study as the best way to connect the southernmost part of Croatia with the rest of the country and will be built for sure, Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said on Wednesday.
"Today we are totally right to say that the bridge will be built, that this will start very soon and that the procedure will be completed in the last quarter of this year," Milanovic told a press conference. "We can say that we have brought this procedure to the very start of its implementation. Everything else after that will be easier," he added.
Milanovic said that the bridge was selected by competent EU authorities as the best among several options proposed. He noted that the Peljesac bridge was not just a construction project, but also a political project to connect the separated parts of Croatia and the EU.
The bridge would be built between the mainland and the Peljesac peninsula to bypass the short stretch of coastline at Neum where Bosnia and Herzegovina has access to the Adriatic Sea.
"Our desire is to connect Croatia together so that in order to reach Dubrovnik people would not have to travel across the territory of a neighbouring and friendly country where a lot of Croats live, but another country nonetheless, which unfortunately will not become an EU member for a long time to come," the prime minister said.
The Minister of Maritime Affairs, Transport and Infrastructure, Sinisa Hajdas Doncic, said that the feasibility study was carried out by the TFP consortium, that construction of the Peljesac bridge was assessed as the best option and that the bridge would be appropriate for financing from EU funds.
Hajdas Doncic said that a tender for its construction was expected to be issued in the last quarter of the year and that the construction would last between two and a half and three years. The cost of the bridge construction would be 1.55 billion kuna and the cost of the entire project, including the construction of connecting roads, would be 2.85 billion kuna.
The government expects that the European Union will financially support the project with the maximum 85 per cent and that construction will begin next spring at the earliest.
(1 euro = 7.56 kuna)
(Hina)