Turkey’s Dogus eyes infrastructure projects in Bulgaria, expansion in Romanian, Albanian, and Kosovo markets

SOFIA, Nov 30נTurkey’s Dogus Insaat is planning to bid in more motorway and underground extension projects in Bulgaria and is also looking into the high-potential markets of Albania, Kosovo, Croatia and Romania, company officials told SeeNews.
“In Bulgaria we have the metro project, but we are following up to upcoming tenders – motorways, again extension of metro,” Dogus Insaat said in a statement. The statement was released to coincide with the ABC South-East European Conference on Infrastructure in Focus of Internationalisation – New Perspectives for Interregional Cooperation between small and medium enterprises, held in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia earlier this month.
Dogus Insaat will build 6.4 kilometres of underground lines that will be part of the subway’s second segment, a 18 km track with five stations in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia.
“We are following Trakia motorway because we took part in the first part of the Trakia motorway. We are also focused on Maritsa motorway and also we are following up the Vidin-Sofia railway,” the company said.
Dogus Insaat said it mostly focuses on EU-funded projects in the southeastern European region. The company considers the difficulties the Bulgarian government faces in receiving EU funds to be the biggest challenge at the moment.
In May the European Commission unblocked 115 million euro worth of payments to Bulgaria under the EU’s ISPA pre-accession programme related to the construction of the Lyulin motorway and the preparation of projects for building roads that are part of European transport corridors.
Bulgaria plans to pour billions of euro into upgrading its infrastructure by 2015 to sustain fast economic development. It stands to receive 11 billion euro from the bloc’s cohesion and structural funds until 2013.
In line with its regional strategy, Dogus Insaat is focusing on the Balkan countries which are physically close to Turkey. “At the moment we are present in Bulgaria, we have a presence in Romania with our banking group, Garanti Bank. We are building the new airport in Kiev, Ukraine, and investing in a marina-hotel complex in Croatia.”
In Albania and Kosovo “we are following some projects but there’s no concrete project yet. We are specialised in infrastructure projects – mainly roads, railways, metros, dams, hydropower plants, airports. We are also looking into public-private partnership projects, concession contracts with our international partners.”