Bulgarian company gets railway project from Kicevo to Albania

SKOPJE, May 11 – Bulgarian company Evrotransproekt won an international tender to make the preliminary research and first draft of the railway line from Kicevo to the border with Albania, Macedonian media reported.
The company and the director of the state railway infrastructure company Besir Deari signed the project on Friday, according to Utrinski Vesnik writes. The implementation will cost some EUR 1 million, half of which is secured by the annual budget and the rest will be allocated in 2010.
The research and project have to be ready for a year. Then the terrain will be expropriated. The government plans to construct the railway line between 2012 and 2014 and set it into operation in 2015.
“The railway line from the city of Kicevo to the Albanian border is part of the railway Corridor number 8, which connects Albania, Macedonia and Bulgaria, from the port of Durres to the port of Varna. In Macedonia, Corridor 8 will have 309 km of railway line. 152 km of them have been built, from Kumanovo to Kicevo,” said Deari.
The Macedonian Railways – Infrastructure says the other 157 km from Kicevo to Albania and from Kumanovo to Bulgaria are part of the government’s investment plans. Currently, a project is being developed for the construction of the line from Kriva Palanka to Bulgaria. Talks with construction companies are under way to secure the continuation of the line to the eastern neighbor.