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Weekly Lists
September 29, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 23
bne:
Infrastructure
First Albanian toll road to open in December
The Durres-Kukes motorway, which will link Albania to Kosovo, is set to become the first toll road in Albania as of December, media reported on September 26.
The introduction of the toll system has triggered concerns over in- creased costs for local residents in one of the poorest areas of Al- bania. It is also expected to have a negative effect on the number of tourists arriving from Kosovo, who account for about half of the total foreign visitors to Albania.
The concessionaire of the Milot-Morine section, which is part of the Durres-Kukes motorway, is United Arab Emirates-based Cata- lyst Viva Das General Contracting.
The concessionaire of the motorway has already completed the in- stallation of electronic toll collection systems, Tirana Times reported.
The fee is set at €5 for cars and will be higher for trucks.
The Durres-Kukes motorway connects Albania’s biggest Adriatic port of Durres with the northern city of Kukes, and leads to the Morine border crossing with Kosovo.
Russian Railways (RZD) monopoly will have its biggest railway projects cut out of the federal budget and it will be made to pay for them itself, Vedomosti daily reported on September 25 citing the budget draft for 2018 and 2019-2020.
The Kremlin seems to be cracking down on the notoriously corrupt national rail company. Since the management revamp in 2015 and an array of cost-cutting measures RZD was forced to give up large share of state financing, which did not save it from projected losses in 2017 leaving the monopoly to rely on government subsidies.
Now the Finance Ministry reportedly cuts the RUB85bn (€1.25bn) that RZD counted to get for the "projects of the century" Baikal-Amur (BAM) and Trans-Siberian railroads, planned to be finished in 2019. These are Soviet era iconic rail lines that run right across the country.
Previously RZD received RUB150bn for the construction from now sealed National Welfare Fund (NWF) in the form of infrastructure bond acquisitions, while another RUB110bn was supposed to be financed from the federal budget. The total cost of the project
is estimated at RUB562bn, out of which the company invested RUB173bn by 2017.
Russian Railways’ budget cut