The government has not chosen a private investor of them yet, and has not set any deadline for the start and completion of the two roads.
A year ago, Romania’s national company in charge of highways and national roads CNADNR said it would sign the concession contracts for the two roads at the end of 2013. The two highways are now exactly where they were a year ago: the names of the private investors competing in the race to build and operate them are known and the government is still negotiating, conducting the so-called ‘competitive dialog’, to select the companies that will come up with the funding for the building of the two.
“The dialog phase of the competitive dialog procedures is now in progress to award the concession contracts (for Bucharest southern beltway section and the Craiova-Pitesti expressway/highway i.e.). We cannot provide details about the phases of the competitive dialog while contract awarding procedures are in progress,” CNADNR told ZF.
Both Romanian (Euro Construct Trading 98) and foreign (Italy’s Impregilor and Spain’s Obrascon Huarte) companies are competing over the concession of the two highways.
“Once the final bids have been evaluated, the concession contract will be awarded to the winning bidder,” CNADNR says, without specifying when that might be. Raising the funding for the design and building of the two highways will fall upon the concession winners, CNADNR added.
The Craiova-Pitesti highway or expressway, a 121 kilometer road that both Ford (Craiova) and Dacia (Mioveni, near Pitesti), have repeatedly asked for will cost about EUR1.7 billion or EUR14 million per kilometer, according to CNADNR estimates. The government has not decided whether to make it a highway or expressway yet and will choose which it will be upon negotiations with the companies interested in the project.
On the other hand, the highway-grade southern section of the Bucharest beltway will cost EUR2 billion, but the construction contract will also come with the concession to operate and maintain A1 highway (Bucharest-Pitesti) and A2 highway (Bucharest-Constanta).
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)