The Armenian government formally acknowledged on Thursday a two-year delay in the reconstruction of two major national highways as part of an ambitious project to upgrade the country’s transport infrastructure.
Work on the two highways stretching almost 100 kilometers from Ashtarak, a town 22 kilometers west of Yerevan, to Armenia’s second largest city of Gyumri was due to be completed this year in line with the government’s agreements with the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The Manila-based bank is financing it with two loans worth over $250 million.
Officials in Yerevan admitted earlier this year that these roadworks have fallen behind schedule. Some of them blamed Spanish and Chinese construction firms that were contracted to carry out them.
The government formalized this delay by extending its deadlines for expanding and refurbishing the two roads to September 2019. Transport and Communications Minister Vahan Martirosian gave no reasons for the decision when he spoke at a cabinet meeting in Yerevan on Thursday.
The roadworks stem from the government’s North-South transport project aimed at upgrading Armenia’s main highways stretching over 550 kilometers to Georgia and Iran. Only two highways connecting Yerevan to the towns of Ararat and Ashtarak have been completed to date, costing $60 million in ADB funding. Their total length of is just over 30 kilometers.
Martirosian insisted on September 26 that the government is committed to rebuilding the remaining road sections mainly passing through the mountainous Vayots Dzor and Syunik provinces in the country’s southeast. He estimated that this will require as much as $1.5 billion in funding, a figure equivalent to roughly half of the Armenian state budget.
Martirosian said the government hopes to attract the investments from private firms, rather than seek more loans from the ADB or other international lenders. That would lead to the creation of Armenia’s first-ever toll roads, he said. The minister gave no possible dates for the project’s completion.
Silva Adamian, who coordinates a team of civic groups monitoring the project’s implementation, was highly skeptical on that score. “We will not have that [reconstructed] road in full,” she told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). “We may get parts of it, but that won’t happen anytime soon. If we have something by 2025, it will be very good.”