New negotiations on construction of highway through Montenegro on March 18th - Greek-Israeli Actor HCH as possible contractor

- The Montenegrin Government's representatives for construction of the highway will start official negotiations with Greek-Israeli consortium Actor HCH, the second-ranked bidder on the tender for construction of Bar-Boljari highway, on Thursday (March 18, 2010) - the media in Podgorica announced yesterday (March 15, 2010).

People from the Government of Montenegro announced that, after Split-based Konstructor had been disqualified, the negotiations might be successful only if Greek Actor decided to lower the price of construction.

The Greek-Israeli consortium offered the price of 3.92bn EUR for construction of the whole highway, 2.78bn EUR of which were supposed to be provided by the state. That offer is about 1bn EUR higher than the one given by Konstruktor.

However, people from Actor say that the commencement of construction will depend on the readiness of multilateral finance institutions and banks such as EBRD and EIB to finance that project.

The negotiations with the Greek-Israeli consortium are going to start exactly one year after the financial bids for the highway were opened.

After it decided to invite Actor-HCH to the negotiations, the Government set the deadline of one month for the talks to end. That consortium will be given two months to provide necessary financial guarantee and sign contracts.