Finance & Funding

Budimex and Strabag have won a contract to design and build 16km of Poland’s four-lane A1 highway between Tuszyn and Bełchatów. The €111 million deal with the Polish General Directorate for National Roads and Highways is scheduled for completion within 32 month, excluding winter months. The entire section will be concrete and includes two junctions, 17 bridges, several intersections and access roads, noise barriers and wildlife crossings.

Austrian construction firm Strabag and Bulgarian firm GBS-Infrastructure Construction have won the contract to build the 32.4 km Sofia-Kalotina motorway. Cost of the 32.4kmn four-lane project is estimated at €120 million with completion set for 2020. The Kalotina motorway will run from the capital Sofia’s ring road to the border town of Kalotina where it will connect with Serbia’s A4 motorway. It is also part of 6,100km 10-country European route E80 running from the Portuguese capital Lisbon to the

Despite global supply chain challenges, sales for Terex Cranes grew 10% to $335 million in the second quarter this year. Terex Corporation also reported an overall strong second quarter 2018 sales of US$1.4 billion, up 19% versus Q2 2017, with increased sales and backlog in all three business segments. The company said that results were driven by its ongoing corporate Execute to Win business strategy and during a period of broad-based growth. The company said that the global cranes market is generally

China’s transport infrastructure expansion programme is continuing at a steady rate. This has been revealed with new figures from China’s Ministry of Transport. In the period from January 2018 to June 2018 US$190.9 billion was invested in transport infrastructure projects across China. However the focus has shifted slightly with an increase in funding for rural road projects of around 1.8% and a gain for expressway projects of 12.8%.

A South Korean contractor, GS Construction, looks set to build the new Selander Bridge in Tanzania’s capital, Dar es Salaam. The deal was signed between GS Construction and the Tanzania National Roads Agency (Tanroad). The new bridge comes with a pricetag of some US$126.26 million and will take until 2021 to complete. The project includes the 1.4km bridge plus upgrades to up to 7km of connecting roads. Nearly 83% of the funding required for the project will be supplied by South Korean sources, with the

Ghana is looking to secure a major financing package from China for road infrastructure improvements. The intended funding deal will be in the form of a loan, which will be used to build new road links and upgrade existing routes. One of the key projects being prioritised is an upgrade to the route connecting Wa with Bulenga in the north of the country and close to the border with Burkina Faso.

India continues to develop its road network, with the country’s ambitious plans moving ahead. Contracts for 6,320km of road projects have so far been awarded by the current Indian Government. This is for the first phase of the programme and the work is worth a massive US$20.95 billion in all. However the entire programme of road development will cover some 84,000km of roads and will be worth an eye-popping $109.1 billion.

Land is being acquired for a major expressway project in India. In all 10,649 individual land sale arrangements have been made with 20,916 owners for the Nagpur-Mumbai expressway project. Buying the land has cost close to US$775 million so far, with around 86% of the land needed for the project having now been acquired. The deals have been handled by Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC).