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| R1 motorway: first of three road PPPs |
At the end of August the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development signed up as one of the main lenders for the first ever public-private partnership road project in Slovakia, emphasizing the bank’s importance as a provider of funding for groundbreaking infrastructure projects in central and eastern Europe. The London-based supranational committed €200 million to a senior term facility totalling €1 billion that will cover most of the forecast €1.3 billion cost of the R1 motorway.
The project will involve the construction of a 47-kilometre stretch of dual carriageway between Nitra and Tekovske Nemce and a 5.7-kilometre northern bypass for the city of Banska Bystrica in the southwest of the country that was awarded to the Granvia Consortium under a 30-year availability fee-based concession.
Granvia is a joint venture between France’s Vinci Concessions (70%) and ABN Amro Highway, its Dutch partner (30%), which won a public tender hosted by the Slovak transport ministry in February. Construction of the east-west road link has already started and is set to be completed in mid-2012.