Page 26 - bne_newspaper_May_11_2018b

Weekly Lists
May 11, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 26
bne:
Infrastructure
Romania receives six bids for €614.1mn rail upgrade works
A troubled bridge over Balkan waters
Romania has received six bids in a tender for rail upgrade works worth an estimated RON2.86bn (€614.1mn), VAT excluded, Roma- nia's national rail infrastructure manager CFR said on April 26.
The rail stretch to be upgraded, Apata-Cata, is part of the Brasov- Sighisoara railway, which in turn is part of the Rhine-Danube cor- ridor. Investors have repeatedly underlined that the lack of modern infrastructure in Romania affects their productivity and exports, while poor infrastructure also keeps investment away.
Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic last month hailed the deal to build the Peljesac bridge as a lasting benefit of the country’s EU membership, after Croatia’s state road operator signed a deal with the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) to build the bridge, one of Europe’s largest.
Securing financing and signing a deal on the construction was a breakthrough for Plenkovic’s government; previously, the project had been discussed in Zagreb for two decades, having been taken up and dropped by successive governments.
Yet the €281mn deal with the CRBC-led consortium is already the source of controversy.
Not only is the bridge fiercely opposed by neighbouring Bosnia, which claims access to its Neum port will be cut off for larger ships, the tender process that ended in the selection of the consor- tium to build the EU-financed bridge has been challenged by rival bidders for the contract.
Turkmenistan on May 2 opened a new $1.5bn cargo and passenger seaport facility on the Caspian Sea. The Turkmenbashi port infrastructure will boost its revenues from handling traffic on North-South shipping routes, tripling the remote Central Asian country’s annual cargo handling capacity to 25mn-26mn tonnes.
The launch of the port facility is in line with China’s huge One Belt One Road initiative, which seeks to transform and group Central Asian territories into a transit hub with modern infrastructure for Chinese exports to Europe and vice versa. The post-Soviet nation has long had its own ambition to become a transit zone and it is already linked to China via a Kazakh railway. The Turkmenbashi facility will play a role in helping Ashgabat extend its transit capacity for Chinese goods.
Revenue-starved Turk- menistan glad for new $1.5bn seaport facility