THE TRANSPORT ministry will need to pay €81 million to settle obligations stemming from the now-cancelled concessionaire agreement with Slovenské Diaľnice for construction and operation of sections of the D1 highway that made up the so-called first public-private partnership (PPP) package. The state will make this settlement for preparatory work that was completed, for conservation of the construction sites, as well as for consultants and technical assistance to the National Highway Company, experts’ opinions and property purchases, the SITA newswire wrote.
In early September Transport Minister Ján Figeľ decided not to extend the deadline for reaching financial closure of this PPP project, which would have financed the construction of five sections of the D1 highway between Martin and Prešov. The concessionaire, Slovenské Diaľnice, which was supposed to build and then operate the 75-kilometre section of the highway for 30 years, had been unable to close the financial aspects of the project before August 30. The deadline for financial closure had already been extended several times by previous transport minister Ľubomír Vážny.
SITA wrote that Figeľ said that the government of Robert Fico had set unrealistic deadlines in an effort to complete the D1 highway between Bratislava and Košice by the end of 2010 and that this discouraged some potential investors and resulted in an increase in the project’s costs and that banks willing to provide loans to the project considered it as somewhat risky and wanted higher than normal interest rates.
