First two phases of North-South transport corridor to take 36 months

YEREVAN, April 27. /ARKA/. Major reconstruction of the first three sections of North-South transport corridor - Yerevan-Ashtarak (11.7 km), Ararat -Yerevan (38 km) and Ashtarak-Talin (42 km) will take 36 months, Ara Hovsepian, the executive director of the state-owned nonprofit company supervising the North-South project, said today.

The Armenian government had approved yesterday the results of an open international tender for the implementation of the first and second phases of the project, announcing Spanish Corsan Corvian Construccion as the winner.

Today the Armenian ministry of transport and communication and the Spanish company have signed a $250 million agreement to that end. Armenian transport and communication minister Manuk Vardanyan said the transport corridor will be the first concrete and four-lane highway in Armenia stretching for 550 km – from the border with Iran in the south to Georgian border in the north.

The average cost of building 1 km long concrete road is more than 2.7 million U.S. dollars. It includes also the construction of bridges, underground passages and other facilities.

The Armenian government approved January 14, 2010 the investment program to build the North-South transport corridor, as well as a $500 million framework loan agreement with the Asian Development Bank.  Tigran Sargsayn said earlier a similar program has never been implemented in Armenia. He said its total cost is estimated at $1.5 billion.

Head of Corsan Corvian Construccion, Francisco Garcia Mark, said the North-South highway is one of the company’s largest projects in Europe. The joint venture Safege (Belgium) and Eptisa (Spain) was selected as the contractor of the first two phases of the project.

The project is designed to upgrade Armenia’s main corridor road as part of a broader thrust to improve connectivity, and boost trade, growth and livelihood opportunities in the Caucasus and Central Asia sub-regions. -0-