Greece’s Aktor officially announced the tunnel winner

TIRANA, April 4 – Greece’s Aktor has been officially announced as the winner of an international tender to build the Tirana-Elbasan tunnel, the General Roads Directorate announced this week after previous reports by Greek media declaring Aktor as the winner of the international tender held last January.
Aktor, which is one of the largest construction companies in Greece, a member of Ellaktor Group, won the international tender after offering 83 million dollars to build the 2.3 km long tunnel, outbidding seven other international companies who submitted bids varying from 54 percent to 81 percent of the initial 150 million dollar price tag set by the Albanian government.
The Bechtel-Enka consortium which last year successfully completed the Rreshen-Kalimash highway including a giant tunnel linking Albania to Kosovo, three Greek companies, and three other companies from Italy, Croatia and Slovenia also participated in the race.
The tunnel is expected to be completed within 18 months once the contract has been signed and possibly open to traffic within 2012. The Tirana-Elbasan highway will be the first segment of southern road axis and an important hub of the Corridor 8 project with Italy, Macedonia and Bulgaria. The highway, expected to cut the distance to Elbasan to 31 kilometres, down from 48 currently, will have four lanes and two tunnels, 2.3 and 2.1 km long each, saving passengers to the central Albanian city of Elbasan 40 minutes compared to the current mountainous road.
The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) has also recently approved last week 222.7 million dollars to finance the Tirana-Elbasan highway.