Adriatic–Ionian motorway or the Blue Corridor is part of the 1560-km long Mediterranean Corridor, a regional and European infrastructure project with immense direct impact on the country’s further economic and social transformation, and movement along the longest Mediterranean ring.
Construction on the Milot-Fier highway, part Blue Corridor, also the European Connectivity Network – or the highway connecting Montenegro, Albania with Greece on the south and with Croatia on the north and the Mediterranean Ring – is set to begin work soon. The project will significantly improve connectivity with Kosovo, and will shorten distance and drive time between Albania’s north and south.
A special meeting took place at the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy to launch several sections of this Corridor. Local government representatives, business community representatives and tourism operators attended the meeting. Addressing the gathering, Prime Minister Edi Rama underlined that Blue Corridor will directly serve all the areas the route traverses and it will spur development of Albania’s tourism and agriculture.
The government head also outlined a series of other important projects set to be finalized across the country soon.
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Thank you very much.
It was a very important day for me to attend this gathering in person, as it is not just about one of the infrastructure projects, but about a major road infrastructure project with immense direct impact on the country’s further economic and social transformation, and it is about allocating a huge financial commitment for the project’s finalization.
It is about a long-awaited project over the years.
It is about an infrastructure project that we managed to include in the European connectivity network since the very beginning.
It is a project we succeeded to include in the funding channel under the Berlin Process, but the time it took for us to wait for the funding to be provided was too long and therefore we decided to press ahead with the project on our own. Fortunately, it was not totally wasted as we succeeded to gain whole required assistance from the Western Balkans Investment Framework (WBIF), which is already underway with the construction of a section along Milot-Muriqan motorway that has been currently suspended for the consultancy process to complete before it is put out to tender and the construction work kicks off. The new motorway is designed to connect Murriqan all the way down to the southern city of Fier, traversing whole Blue Corridor route, with a direct immense impact on development of all the areas around this major route, major impact on development of tourism and agriculture, further economic and social transformation of the country, as well as it will improve connectivity and movement along the big Mediterranean Ring.
The Blue Corridor will make Albania more accessible by land in terms of tourism; something Croatia has delivered on for years now thanks to its geographical position, as well as thanks to its infrastructure the country has built. The new highway will also put an end to the decades-long congested traffic problems along the road linking Tirana with Lezhe and further Shkoder, where road safety standards have definitely improved, yet safety problems are still existent.
It is set to become a motorway due to be certified by the EU in terms of road safety as no business activities will be allowed to operate on both sides of the road, eventually eliminating a permanent road and driving danger. It is designed to be a high-speed motorway and as such it will be an added value as part of the movement along the Road of the Nation.
This is not the whole road, but a section of it, as the Minister noted and as you already saw through the projector. The highway will further stretch towards the country’s north-east, but this segment is the most strategic and critical part of the Blue Corridor.
I am fully confident that the tender will turn out to be successful taking notice of the way the tender and procedures are organized. In the meantime, it is with great pleasure that we recall all the speculations over an alleged prefabricated tender, for an alleged company that had supposedly been announced as winner of the tender, for an alleged corruption scandal and all sorts of allegations which turned out to be null, because the tender was carried out with such a rigorousness that even a big and leading construction company was disqualified as its bid was not in the country’s interest and it was not in the interest of the part we represent, namely the public interest. The bidding company demanded extremely long deadlines, as well as other requests we couldn’t fulfil.
I would like to conclude by saying that construction of this Corridor, this motorway project, completes a large part of Albania’s main road infrastructure network. In the meantime we are working on the project designed to expand and upgrade the road connecting Elbasan and Qafe-Thane, as well as we are working with the European Union to deliver on the Corridor 8 project under the EU’s Economic Investments Plan, so that project becomes a reality in terms of any standards, not just a road in its current state. We then plan to move on to another stage of building a national network of railways.
Projects on construction of more international airports are already underway, whereas the Tirana international airport has been most recently taken to a whole new level in terms of passenger handling capacities for several days now. Work on construction of Vlora international airport is underway at an amazing construction rate and the good news is that the Munich Airport, the operator hired for Vlora airport, has launched a tender of its own in terms of securing all the logistics and operational means, confirming on one hand the project’s full credibility, confirming the project’s standards too as the Munich Airport would refuse to embark on a project that would violate environmental and European standards, as some have alleged, as well as the transparency standards. This also confirms the project’s guaranteed success, because the Munich Airport would not accept a useless project.
Kukes airport is slowly but steadily expanding.
Plans on the Kukes airport are clear and we are confident that within a reasonable time frame the airport will become a point of reference for the whole area it affects, both in Albania and Kosovo and even in a wider region, in addition to the services it provides.
The tender for construction of the Saranda airport will be launched soon.
This way we will fully deliver on our ambitious “sky gates” project,
As far as the road infrastructure is concerned, this project will almost complete construction of the main roads network and work will go on to build access and rural roads further deeper in the territory in tandem with work to enhance road maintenance capacities and maintenance quality.
Many often say “roads have been already constructed.” No, the roads have yet to be constructed indeed. Only tenders were actually launched for construction of many of the road projects and they were totally abandoned. However, several projects have been already completed and work is underway on some other remaining roads projects.
The next phase will focus on construction of the railway network and work is already underway for construction of Tirana-Durres highway. However, a lot remains to be done in this respect and press ahead and eventually deliver on the Hani i Hotit railway, Durres-Prishtine railway, as well as the Corridor 8 railway.
These are all ambitious projects we will definitely finalize step by step through various processes, including feasibility studies, the design and the investment implementation processes.
Thank you very much and I very much hope that construction of the entire Blue Corridor project kicks off within a reasonable time frame.
