Ponta Cabinet promised to have 1,800 kilometers built by then.
“We will cross the mountains by 2020. Sibiu-Pitesti and Comarnic-Brasov will be built in parallel. They don’t cannibalize each other. Their purpose is completely different and they will both be completed with different types of financing,” Neaga said at the ZF Construction & Infrastructure Summit 2014, organized by Ziarul Financiar in partnership with Genesis Development, Marsh, Octagon, Certasig, Schoenherr, Skanska and Biris Goran.
“Yes,” Neaga said repeatedly when asked whether the authorities would stick to the plan to have 2,440 kilometers of highway in Romania by 2020, including one connecting Constanta to Nadlac via Sibiu-Pitesti.
A total of 653 kilometers of highway are under construction at the moment, with “up to 100 kilometers” set for inauguration this year, including the first segment of the Nadlac-Arad highway and the third segment of the Orastie-Sibiu highway, according to CNADNR.
“We are also trying to have the second segment of Timisoara-Lugoj and of Nadlac-Arad completed. The other segments of the Lugoj-Deva will be completed next year. They are working hard on the Lugoj-Deva and we expect it to open for traffic in the first half of next year,” said Horia Nicolae, head of the contract preparation department with CNADNR.
The representatives of the business environment say such plans are impossible to implement considering the lack of vision authorities have shown and the history of highway building in Romania, so the country would need “to bring the entire China here to build 1,800 kilometers by 2020.”
On the other hand, the CNADNR officials say that so far, infrastructure works have been delayed by the petitions challenging the public tenders and by some builders not fulfilling their contracts.
Builders, in turn, blame the authorities for the procrastination of the works, pointing out the differences between what politicians say and what actually happens in the infrastructure field.
As for the petitions challenging the public tenders, Laurentiu Plosceanu, chairman of the the Romanian Association of Construction Companies, ARACO, says that he thinks “the terms of the contracts were deliberately set to lead to tender suspension. I won’t get into details. Many of the terms are abusive and some of them illegal. They require completion of a complex project in much too short a time.”
In Bucharest, for instance, work on the south section of the beltway is behind schedule because of the lack of funding and the three construction contracts signed will be terminated, CNADNR officials said. The priority now is the northern beltway section.
“The south Bucharest beltway project is already four or five years old due to the lack of funding, so we have to terminate these contracts and commission a new feasibility study. All the three contracts for the south beltway will be cancelled,” said Andrei Cristian, deputy manager with CNADNR’s Infrastructure Department.
Besides the beltway, a number of construction projects are due to begin to expand Bucharest’s subway network.
After subway operator Metrorex started construction of the Line 5 of the city in the Drumul Taberei district in the west of Bucharest, it plans to continue working on it to have it connect the west to the east of the city.
“We set out to start work on the Piata Iancului-Pantelimon section in 2015. We also set out to start work on Eroilor-Iancului in 2016 at the latest,” said Catalin Homor, investment manager with Metrorex.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)