Skip to main content

Bosnia cancels a tender for Corridor 5C, part of European route E73

Bosnia is cancelling a tender for part of its Corridor 5C project, an integral part of the class-A north-south central European route E73. Route E73 runs around 700km from Hungary south through eastern Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Adriatic Sea in the area of Ploče port. The longest part of this corridor goes through Bosnia and Herzegovina – nearly 340km. Director of the Bosnian motorways company Autoput FBiH, Adnan Terzic, confirmed the cancelled tender to the Bosnian daily newspaper Dnev
March 13, 2017 Read time: 2 mins
Bosnia is cancelling a tender for part of its Corridor 5C project, an integral part of the class-A north-south central European route E73.

Route E73 runs around 700km from Hungary south through eastern Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Adriatic Sea in the area of Ploče port. The longest part of this corridor goes through Bosnia and Herzegovina – nearly 340km.

Director of the Bosnian motorways company Autoput FBiH, Adnan Terzic, confirmed the cancelled tender to the Bosnian daily newspaper Dnevni Avaz. Work will be retendered for parts of the Pocitelj node-Pocitelj bridge and Pocitelj-Zvirovici section.

Terzic said that the tender from 2014 failed several reviews, including one from the European Investment Bank (EIB) which is financing the project. A new tender will be set up likely to be worth around €103 million but he gave no dates.

E73 consists mostly of two-lane roads with at-grade intersections, although in 2000s, around a third of the route was upgraded to motorway standard. The remainder of the route is being upgraded.

Early last year, Autoput FbiH announced that 120km of the 340km is complete and around anouther 100km would likely be completed by 2020.

In mid-2014, a 6km stretch of the highway between Sarajevo and Zenica was opened that included a 3km-loong tunnel. The March 1 tunnel, named after date of Bosnia's independence referendum, meant that the journey between the two cities was cut from one hour to 30 minutes.

The tunnel cost around €62 million had been under construction for several years, first by two Slovenian companies that eventually which went bankrupt, and later by a consortium of Bosnian companies, according to a report by Balkan Insight at the time. The tunnel is the longest in Bosnia and is one of the most important infrastructure projects to be completed since the 1992-5 war.

Related Content

  • Bosnia highway plan
    March 3, 2021
    Work is being planned on a key Bosnian highway.
  • Romania tenders for two sections of Pitesti-Sibiu motorway
    May 14, 2018
    Romania’s national road company has tendered two sections of the Sibiu-Pitesti motorway as part of ongoing work to complete the cross-country A1. Out to tender are sections 1 and 5 of the five-section Sibiu-Pitesti route. Romania’s Autostrada A1 will, when completed, will run for nearly 580km to connect Bucharest with the Banat and Crișana regions in the western part of the country. The motorway starts on the outskirts of Bucharest and runs to Pitești, Sibiu, Deva, Timișoara and Arad before crossing the b
  • Astaldi begins drilling tunnels on Poland’s S7 dual carriageway
    March 14, 2017
    Italian contractor Astaldi has begun drilling two parallel tunnels as part of its S7 dual carriageway project in Poland. Each tunnel, between Naprawa and Skomielna Biala and under the Lubon Maly massif, will each be just over 2km long. Astaldi, based in Rome, won the three-year S7 dual carriageway project worth around €225 million in 2016 Work includes 38 bridges and viaducts and three motorway services. There will also be 25km of access roads and two junctions. The north-south S7, when complete
  • Romania gets EIB funds
    February 20, 2012
    Funding worth nearly €600 million from the European Investment Bank (EIB) could help improve Romania’s national road network.