Repair of M2 within Compact Program to start in 2012

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) will provide US$130 million to Moldova for the road rehabilitation component of the Compact Program. The agreement signed on February 8 allows repairing 93 km of the national highway M2, from Sarateni village to the intersection going to Drochia, Info-Prim Neo reports. The works will be executed in 2012 – 2013. Minister of Transport and Road Infrastructure Anatol Salaru said that the road is now in a deplorable condition. This is also the cause of the large number of accidents happening in the area. “I hope that when the works are completed, we will have a perfect road that will serve as example for other road rehabilitation projects that will be implemented the next years,” he said. According to the Transport Ministry, 10,000 km of road must be repaired in Moldova. The works are estimated at €4 billion. Moldova signed road rehabilitation programs with the World Bank, the EBRD, the EIB, and the European Commission. Valentina Badrajan, executive director of the Millennium Challenge Fund Moldova that is responsible for the implementation of the Compact Program, said the detailed designing of this road section will be finished by June and the tender contests to select the contractors will be held in July. The contracts with the winning companies will be signed in December, while the works will start in 2012. The work monitoring and assessment reports will be made public every six months. For the first time within this project, the Millennium Challenge Corporation will transfer the money for the works directly to the accounts of the contractors. “We will be making everything possible for the implementation of this component and the second transition to a modern agriculture component to be successful. This will enable us to apply for more financing from the MCC when the Compact is completed,” said Valentina Badrajan. The Compact Program in Moldova started to be implemented in September 2010, in accordance with the agreements signed by the Governments of Moldova and the United States through the MCC. The five-year program has a budget of US$262 million. The money is provided as a grant.