The difficult economic situation could be further complicated by the new request of the Chinese company CRBC - that they need more time and more money for the first section of the highway.
The director of the business unit for the management of the highway construction project, Goran Vujović, told the Public Service that "the Chinese contractor has already applied with a request for an extension of the deadline and additional payments for their reasons, which they consider to be expedient". Without specifying the sum in question, he added that the authorities will assess the justification of that request.
Today, the Ministry of Transport did not want to talk about this request, while independent MP Aleksandar Damjanović says that the Chinese partner is doing what is in his interest.
"He will not give up the planned profit in this business and will insist not to lose a single cent. Now it is up to the Government to respond as much as it can to the Chinese partner, what is certain is that the problem of delaying the deadline for completion will will definitely increase the price of the highway," says Damjanović.
From MANS, they say that a lot of things have been under the veil of secrecy until now, so additional costs were incurred that are measured in tens of millions of euros, and we also had the forgotten Smokovac interchange. None of our officials were responsible for that.
"What is particularly problematic is how much money the Chinese will actually ask for and on what basis and who will simply make the decision about it. What has been the practice until now is that all the additional payments we had, we just knew about them and their amounts after the work was completed. The key question here is who in the government will put the signature, put the seal," Milovac points out.
The deadline for the completion of the first section was first extended until September of this year, so now the next summer is being mentioned. MANS does not accept the Chinese's latest reasons for the delay - that they could not provide workers due to the pandemic, and that the weather did not allow them to work.
"The public does not have basic information about what happened with the first extension, what were the key reasons and who was supposed to pay the penalties. And now they are already trying to package another extension that will be paid not by the government, but by the citizens from the budget," says Milovac.
In the ecological movement "Ozone", they consider CRBC's demands to be scandalous and say they are unfounded, especially since construction work was being carried out throughout the epidemic. And the first installment for the highway repayment, after the grace period, will arrive already next year.
"This announcement from the Chinese side indicates to us that we will also have a prolongation of everything that was supposed to follow after that, which is the design of other sections and the actual completion of the highway, which unfortunately, with this dynamic, we cannot expect even in ten years," he said. Damjanović.
In the end, MANS says that the worst that could happen is that the works stop and the highway remains unfinished, like a noose around the neck of Montenegro, which in the opinion of many, it already is.
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