Government plans to spend 40 bln lei for road rehabilitation in the next ten years

The Government approved on Wednesday, December 19, the Strategy of the land transport infrastructure for 2008-2017, which envisages investment of about 40 billion lei in road and railway rehabilitation. Transport and Road Management Minister Vasile Ursu told reporters that “the authorities will not manage to rehabilitate roads in a short term on from grants and investment only.” According to him, if these financial resources are not allocated in the next ten years, the rehabilitation process of the country’s roads could last from 16 up to 24 years. This year, the minister says, as many as 150 km of roads were repaired, and this figure is planned to double next year. A total of about two billion lei have to be allocated from the budget in this regard. According to Ursu, the amounts exclusively allocated from the budget are not sufficient to accumulate the needed sums to repair the roads. Given this, revenues to the Road Fund will have to be increased by about 2-10 million dollars every year. According to him, the Road Fund increased this year up to 186 million lei, as for 2008 it is set to grow by 209 million lei. These steps, in the opinion of Ursu, are inevitable, as keeping the rehabilitated roads in a good state is a condition set by the foreign donors to continue crediting the road rehabilitation project, as well as because authorities have seen for themselves that they cannot allow national roads to continue degrading. According to Vasile Ursu, the value of Moldova’s roads diminished from 12 billion lei down to 8 billion lei over the last 15 years as they were left at the mercy of fate. The strategy does not cover roads and railways from the Transnistrian region, but “once the country is reintegrated, the strategy will extend to the roads and railways on the left bank of the Nistru River,” the minister said, quoted by Info-Prim Neo.