World Bank Backs Albania Infrastructure Projects
Photo: Orsalia Kalantzopoulos
01 10 2007 Tirana_ Albania has received fresh promises of support for its infrastructure projects from the World Bank, after Prime Minister Sali Berisha, met with the Bank’s chief, Robert Zoellick, and other officials in New York.
Confirmation of support for Albania’s forthcoming secondary road renovation scheme, the “Feeder Roads Project”, came on Sunday from the World Bank’s Director of the South-east Europe Country Unit, Orsalia Kalantzopoulos.

“The government should go ahead and start applying this project, while the World Bank will finance it retroactively”, she said.

Kalantzopoulos.also backed Albania’s largest road construction project to date, the Durres-Morina highway.

“We see this project as very important both for Albania and Kosovo”, said the World Bank official.

The project, which includes a 7-km-tunnel, is being built by the Turkish American consortium Bechtel-Enka, and will connect Albania’s port of Durres with Kosovo.

For his part, Berisha informed World Bank officials about his government’s efforts to invest in the energy market, and asked Kalantzopoulos for assistance in the evaluation of tenders and the negotiating process with the companies that will be chosen for the projects.

At their meeting last week, the World Bank’s President, Robert Zoellick, encouraged Berisha to press ahead with reforms and the fight against corruption.

The Bank is already providing €120 million for the construction of the Vlora Thermal Power Plant, Albania’s largest investment in the energy sector over the past two decades.

Albania has been suffering from a severe energy crisis in recent years, due to a big rise in demand for electricity.

In the past few months the country has had to cope with extensive power cuts, sometimes lasting up to 16 hours a day.

According its National Energy Strategy, Albania will need more than €1.1 billion in investments in its failing power grid to completely eliminate power cuts.

The Ministry of Finance says the energy crises cost the country 1 per cent of its GDP growth in 2006.