Tender on master plan for Durres port extended

TIRANA, Sept. 12 – European Union said Tuesday it had prolonged dates for a tender on a master plan for the Albanian port of Durres, some 33 kilometers west of capital Tirana. The EU has funded 900,000 euro to update the development master plan of Albania’s largest port in the Adriatic Sea. The provisional date of invitation to tender was extended to Oct. 25 from Oct. 5 and the provisional commencement date of the contract was prolonged to Jan. 2007 from Dec. 18 date, the Tenders Electronic Daily, the supplement database to the EU’s Official Journal, reported on its website.
The three-stage project will prepare a master plan and a business plan for the port. It is to be carried out within 11 months and includes possible extension. The first stage will focus on compiling background information and assessing the current operational performance of the port. The output of the second phase, that will focus on international and national traffic forecasting, will be a technical and financial report on available alternative approaches for the management of physical and financial operations of the port. It will also include a recommended course of action. The master plan and the business plan, and the respective implementation schedules are to be finalized during the third phase. The project is funded by EU’s Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilization (CARDS) programme for Albania for 2004, under which it will get 58.5 million euro in assistance.
The port of Durres lies on the western end of pan-European transport Corridor VIII which links the Adriatic and Ionian coasts with the Black Sea coast, crossing Albania, landlocked Macedonia and Bulgaria. It handles some 80 percent of the passengers and goods flowing through the Albania’s four seaports. Last year, it handled 3.1 million tones of cargo and 703,344 passengers. The port’s existing master plan, drafted in 1994, envisages a complete overhaul of the port’s infrastructure and superstructure, building a new passenger terminal, rebuilding quays and introducing European Union standards to the entire port infrastructure.