Belgium’s Liebrecht & wooD on Tuesday inaugurated a four-kilometer road under the Bucharest-Constanta Highway connecting Balaceanca and Cernica, to easily reach a plot of land it wants to develop a retail park on.
The EUR4.8 million investment was entirely self-funded even though the road helps several thousand people living in Cernica, Balaceanca and Fundeni get to Bucharest faster. However, at the ribbon cutting ceremony two mayors, the Calarasi County prefect, a member of the Chamber of Deputies and a state secretary in charge of infrastructure projects took turns in delivering speeches.
“The construction of the road took eighteen months,” Patrick Van Den Bossche, managing director of Liebrecht & wooD, which plans to invest EUR110 million in the Cernica Park retail complex, said on Tuesday.
Had it not been for some problems with the necessary papers, it could have been completed in six months, he added.
Meanwhile, Romania’s national company in charge of highways and national roads CNADNR is trying to find solutions to complete a three-kilometer section of the Bucharest-Ploiesti highway, a road opened for traffic in 2012 that has most of its entrances still blocked.
Moreover, Automobile Dacia, Romania’s largest exporter, had to wait six years for the construction of a 2.6 kilometer expressway between the plant in Mioveni and the DN73 (national road 73), while the Pitesti-Sibiu highway that should help it get its cars to Western Europe faster is still nothing more than a promise. Ironically, when the Liebrecht & wooD completed its road, Transport Minister Ioan Rus presented the master plan of the roads that should be built until 2030.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)