The second section of the Skopje-Blace highway is expected to enter the construction phase at the end of this month, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski announced.

According to him, work is scheduled to begin on August 26, as all the necessary conditions for the project’s implementation have now been met.

Mickoski said construction would officially begin this month and that all formalities and procedures concerning the Albanian section of the Blace-Skopje route had been completed. He said that, as far as he could recall, the start had been set for August 26, but cautioned against treating that date as definitive. The prime minister added that the decade-old project, announced long ago, finally has a contractor—a domestic company—as well as supervision, and therefore assessed that every condition for the start of highway construction had been met.

Meanwhile, work is currently underway at 1,200 locations across Macedonia, Mickoski noted. He also announced that construction of the Bukojchani-Kichevo segment is expected to begin in September, while he said work on the Kichevo-Ohrid highway would be intensified and the highway completed gradually.

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According to him, the project will be financed through a grant worth 30.8 million euros and a loan of 167.6 million euros.

Trajanovski explained that the new highway segment will be 10.5 kilometers long, and together with the 1.5 kilometers built earlier, the total length of the highway to the border will reach 12 kilometers.

“The grant is 30.8 million euros, while the credit (loan) is 167.6 million euros. The length of this highway is 10.5 kilometers. Previously, 1.5 kilometers were built, so the total length from the Stenkovec interchange near Skopje to the border is 12 kilometers. These 10.5 kilometers, which are the subject of today’s loan, will have two lanes in each direction with a width of 3.5 meters and a shoulder lane of 2.5 meters. The total width of the road will be 27 meters.”

He stressed that the route passes through hilly and mountainous terrain, as part of the Skopje Black Mountain massif, which makes construction extremely difficult. For this reason, the project includes 5 twin-tube tunnels, with a total length of around 5 kilometers, 9 bridges with a total length of 2.5 kilometers, 11 overpasses, 4 galleries for slope stabilization each 1 kilometer long, as well as 9 retaining walls, which will also serve for slope stabilization.”

“We expect construction to begin in August this year. According to the contract, the construction period is approximately 4 years. The consultant has been selected, the contractor has been selected, while supervision is in the evaluation phase and we expect it to be selected soon,” said Koce Trajanovski, director of the Public Enterprise for State Roads.

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