A major milestone was recently reached in construction of the highway connecting Albania and Kosovo. This major milestone was a 5.6 kilometre tunnel which is part of the Rreshen-Kalimash road – one of the segments 170 kilometer Albania-Kosovo motorway.

The celebration ceremony was attended by Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha and his Kosovan counterpart Hashim Thaci. For the Albanians in the Balkans this is a major development connecting two Albanian countries and making the movement of people as easy as possible.

In his speech Berisha said “We lived today one of our wildest dreams. We did not tear down a wall today, rather a mountain that separated us”.

The motorway will create an important link with the Balkan’s main port Durres. This major infrastructure project will cut the journey time from Kosovo by 4 hours making it just a 2 hour drive.

Here are some the key facts about this project:

- About €51m ($72m) economic benefit

- 2000 Albanians working on the motorway

- €1bn ($1.4bn) the total cost of only the 61km Rreshen-Kalimash section

This has also led to a corruption investigation due to the high cost of the Rreshen-Kalimash section due to costs nearly doubling from.

Source: http://www.nce.co.uk/

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Albanian Motorway Highway bridge

albanian highway map route

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