Bosnia gets €750 million loan for Corridor 5C motorway

Bosnia has signed a European loan agreement worth €750 million for several sections of work on the Corridor 5V motorway project.

Denis Zvizdic, head of government for Bosnia and Herzegovina, said the deal was signed in London during a recent investment conference on the western Balkans.

Of the loan amount, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina will get €500 million and the internal but autonomous Republika Srpska will receive €250 million.

The money will be used for constructing four 70km sections of Corridor 5C (Corridor Vc) that runs from Kiev in the Ukraine to Slovakia and Hungary and on through Bosnia to Croatia’s Adriatic coast. The longest single-country stretch lies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, covering 337km.

In mid-2014, a 6km stretch of the highway between Sarajevo and Zenica was opened that included a 3km-loong tunnel. The March 1 tunnel, named after date of Bosnia's independence referendum, meant that the journey between the two cities was cut from one hour to 30 minutes.

The tunnel cost around €62 million had been under construction for several years, first by two Slovenian companies that eventually which went bankrupt, and later by a consortium of Bosnian companies, according to a report by Balkan Insight at the time. The tunnel is the longest in Bosnia and is one of the most important infrastructure projects to be completed since the 1992-5 war.