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| Cintra signs toll road contract in Greece A consortium including Cintra, a toll-road and car-park company, signed the concession with the Greek Government to build, finance, operate, maintain and exploit the Central Greece Motorway (E65). The Greek government had selected the Hispano-Greek consortium as provisional contractor on 7 February. The project is estimated to cost about 1.5 billion euro and the concession will run for 30 years. This will be Cintra's second toll road in Greece, where it has already bid for a third project and is short-listed for a fourth (those two projects represent a projected investment of close to 3 billion euro). The partners in the contract are Cintra (33.34%), ACS Group (33.33%) and GEK, a Greek construction company (33.33%). The road measures 231 km in total and comprises two sections: - the Central Greece segment, to built entirely by the consortium, measures 174 km and runs north-west/south-east through central Greece, connecting the city of Egnatia to the PATHE (Patra-Athens-Thessaloniki) toll road. - the other segment, which measures 57 km., will be built by the Greek government and transferred to the concession company. The newly-built road will come into service in approximately 66 months. The road is expected to become operational by the end of 2009, when part of the road to be built by the Government will be transferred to the concession company. The bulk of the finance, 948.7 million euro, will be in the form of senior bank debt without recourse to the partners. The consortium will contribute another 65 million euro, 66.7 million euro will be raised as subordinated debt, and the other 500 million euro will be a subsidy from the State. write your comments about the article :: © 2007 Construction News :: home page |