Kosovo opens 66-km motorway to North Macedonia

ENKA Insaat ve Sanayi AS

29/05/2019 15:02

PRISTINA, May 29 (Reuters) - Kosovo opened on Wednesday a
700-million-euro ($780 million)  65.5-kilometer motorway linking
it with neighboring North Macedonia that the landlocked country
says would secure a faster route to Greece's Thessaloniki port.
    The four-lane highway was financed by the government and
built by U.S.-Turkish consortium Bechtel-Enka, which also built
a highway from Pristina to the border with Albania in 2013.
    Economists have criticized the government for spending so
much money building highways and neglecting investment in
healthcare and education for example.
    Kosovo is one of the poorest countries in Europe where one-
third of its workforce remains unemployed.
    Infrastructure in Kosovo fell into disrepair during the wars
in the 1990s, and after that projects were put off because of
unresolved issues with Serbia, from which it declared
independence in 2008. 
    Since the declaration of independence, successive
governments have made it a priority to build highways and other
infrastructure projects.


($1 = 0.8976 euros)

 (Reporting by Fatos Bytyci; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
 ((fatos.bytyci@thomsonreuters.com; +383 49 161 602;))