If there are no appeals against tender procedures, the “National Railway Infrastructure Company" (NRIC) will sign contracts with contractors in the railway sector at the amount of over 1.5 billion BGN in the first months of 2019. Right afterwards, we are entering an active phase of construction, Deputy Minister of Transport, Information Technologъ and Communications Velik Zanchev announced at the opening of the Construction conference in 2019, organized by the Bulgarian Construction Chamber and “Stroitel” newspaper.
Velik Zanchev commented that next year will be a key one in terms of OP on “Transport and Transport Infrastructure” and the Connecting Europe Facility, under which are financed some of the largest transport projects in Bulgaria. "The middle of the programming period is a moment when we need to really appraise the future of the two programs and the deadlines for completion of the big projects", the Deputy Minister said. He pointed out that it is very important now to sign contracts with contractors for the railway lines of Elin Pelin - Kostenets and Plovdiv - Bourgas, as well as for the last lot from “Struma” Motorway in order to start the construction.
According to Zanchev, NRIC currently conducts a procedure for the assessment of bids for almost all sections to be constructed by 2023. "By the end of the year we expect to have selected contractors for the railway lines Elin Pelin - Kostenets, Kostenets - Septemvri, Orizovo - Mihailovo, Sofia - Voluyak, as well as for the signaling and telecommunication systems in the directions of Plovdiv - Bourgas and Sofia - Voluyak", explained the Deputy Minister.
Deputy Minister Zanchev commented the road safety issus too, on which a separate panel is dedicated at this year's conference. "This is a topic that requires serious commitment of many institutions, but also from all people directly and indirectly involved in road traffic", Zanchev said. He called on the beneficiaries to be more active in the elaboration of projects under Priority Axis 4 of OPTTI related to innovation in management and services. "The total budget of this axis is 145 million BGN and it is indeed the one that provides the opportunity for introducing the most modern safety systems and measures that guarantee higher transport security", said the Deputy Minister.
