CNADNR general director Daniela Draghia said the authority asked the company in a letter to reduce work costs to observe cost standards and revise the construction schedule.
Last year, the Government introduced cost standards for the construction of highways. One kilometer of highway will cost up to EUR3.802 million in plains, EUR4.98 million in hills and EUR5.922 million in the mountains. The standards do not take into account artwork or related projects, such as bridges, passages, viaducts or tunnels.
The roads authority’s debts to Bechtel amount to EUR90.4 million, TVA excluded.
The construction of the Transylvania Highway, which links central Brasov to western Bors on the Hungarian border, began in 2004 with a EUR2.2 billion contract awarded to Bechtel. Work was halted in mid-2005, when Romanian authorities started looking into contracts signed by the previous administration. The project’s deadline was extended to the end of 2013 from 2012.
The highway is designed to be 415 km long, but only 52.5 km have been built so far.