World Bank Backs Albania Infrastructure Projects

TIRANA, Oct.1- The World Bank’s Director of the South-east Europe Country Unit, Orsalia Kalantzopoulos Confirmed the support for Albania’s forthcoming secondary road renovation scheme, the “Feeder Roads Project”, came on Sunday from.
“The government should go ahead and start applying this project, while the World Bank will finance it retroactively”, she said.
Kalantzopoulos also backed Albania’s largest road construction project to date, the Durres-Morina highway. “We see this project as very important both for Albania and Kosovo”, said the World Bank official.
The project, which includes a 7-km-tunnel, is being built by the Turkish American consortium Bechtel-Enka, and will connect Albania’s port of Durres with Kosovo.
Prime Minister Sali Berisha, met with the World Bank’s chief, Robert Zoellick, and other officials in New York, last week. The World Bank’s President, Robert Zoellick, encouraged Berisha to press ahead with reforms and the fight against corruption.
For his part, Berisha informed World Bank officials about his government’s efforts to invest in the energy market, and asked Kalantzopoulos for assistance in the evaluation of tenders and the negotiating process with the companies that will be chosen for the projects.
The Bank is financing 120 million euro for the construction of the Vlora Thermal Power Plant, Albania’s largest investment in the energy sector over the past two decades.
According its National Energy Strategy, Albania will need more than 1.1 billion euro in investments in its failing power grid to completely eliminate power cuts. The Ministry of Finance says the energy crises cost the country 1 per cent of its GDP growth in 2006.