Bulgaria May Temporarily Halt Hemus Motorway Construction

Lazar Lazarov, head of the Bulgarian Road Infrastructure Agency, has said that the construction of a Hemus motorway section may be temporarily suspended due to a funding shortage.

Lazarov met Tuesday with Dimo Dimov, CEO of the contractor, AM Cherno More AD, according to reports of private TV station bTV. Valentin Nikiforov from the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB) also took part in the meeting

Lazarov noted that funding options were being sought for the Shumen-Belokopitovo section of the Hemus motorway, adding that work on the project would stop by end-2014 unless a way of settling the obligations to the contractor was found.

Construction workers working on the site have staged several protests to demand their delayed salaries.

The contractor has so far presented three certificates for construction works worth around BGN 8 M carried out in 2014 on the Hemus motorway section, according to reports of econ.bg.

Petrov and Lazarov declared Tuesday that the state had not given up on building the motorway section but a temporary halt of construction works seemed to be the only option as the 2014 state budget envisaged no funding for the motorway section and Bulgaria's current financial state did not allow the provision of the necessary amount of money.

The participants in Tuesday's meeting are to discuss options for securing money to continue work on the project with Finance Ministry representatives by the end of the week.