SARAJEVO (Bosnia and Herzegovina), May 16 (SeeNews) – Bosnia's Bihac Airport will soon hire Sarajevo-based engineering company Euro-Asfalt (EA) to build a test runway section, local media reported.
EA won the recent tender called by Bihac city which controls the airport, proposing to do the job for 1.78 million marka ($1.0 million /910,100 euro), or 2.1 million marka including VAT, news portal Klix.ba quoted airport manager Elvedin Sedic as saying in an interview on Wednesday.
Sedic said that thanks to last week's decision of the government of Bosnia's Federation entity to extend financing for the project, all conditions for signing the contract and starting work on the planned 300 metre section have been created.
The Federation government has allocated 10.6 million marka to three airports on the entity's territory - Tuzla, Mostar and Bihac, to support the development of domestic air transport. Under the decision, each airport receive 3.535 million marka.
Sedic said that the Bihac Airport will use 1.5 million marka of the allocated finds to finance expropriation of land for the project, while the remainder will be used to finance the construction of the test runway section. Under the plan, the entire runway will be 2.2 km in length and 60 metres wide.
Bihac, in northwestern Bosnia, now has only a small sports airport. The Federation government decided back in 2016 that it will work towards building a bigger airport for civilian flights at its site which will help boost the economy of the region.
Sedic said that the project design for the future civilian airport will be completed within two months and preliminary estimates show that some 60-70 million marka will be needed to build it. The project would reach 100 million marka, including the construction of an access road and a bridge over the Una river.
The Federation government is interested in the project and could join the Bihac city in its implementation, or take it over completely, Sedic said.
The financing for the project would come 70/30 from commercial banks and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, he added.
(1 euro = 1.95583 marka)