The announced signing of the Memorandum of Cooperation on activities of continuing construction of Montenegro’s highway between the Government of Montenegro and China’s CRBC is an open favouring of this company in a new business worth nearly 1.5 billion Euros.
The Memorandum with CRBC, adopted at yesterday’s session of the Government, will be signed by the Minister of Transport Osman Nurković who used the press conference after the session to also “invite other investors to show interest in the highway project”.
However, the Memorandum of Cooperation that will be signed with the Chinese company implies that immediately after that, “a joint working group will be formed to discuss and coordinate project activities and conduct negotiations on design, financing, construction and forms and conditions for potential cooperation on the Project”.
Thus, the Government of Montenegro is already forming a working group with CRBC in order to agree on details of future work, while at the same time, just formally, it is inviting other companies to “show interest” for partnership with the Government.
It is important to remind that the Minister Nurković had meetings with representatives of CRBC in the middle of last year at the Infrastructure Forum in China, where he estimated that the success in the construction of the existing section of the highway recommends that company “for all future projects in Montenegro”.
Also, at the end of last year at the Chinese Summit in Budapest, at the meeting held between the Prime Minister Duško Marković and the delegation of CRBC, it was concluded that both the Government of Montenegro and CRBC “are interested in continuing cooperation according to the model of public-private partnership”.
From all of the above, a conclusion can be drawn that not only CRBC is being favoured, but there is also a serious suspicion that a good deal of work on negotiations with this Chinese company has already been done through semi-official talks with the highest representatives of the Government of Montenegro.
MANS reminds that the partnership with CRBC on the existing project continues to be the subject of numerous speculations regarding key information, as the relevant Ministry of Transport, as well as other state bodies involved in this work, still refuse to make public key information on the construction of the Smokovac – Mateševo section.
MANS calls on the Government of Montenegro and Minister Osman Nurković to inform the Montenegrin public without delay on the call to express interest for the construction of the second section Bar-Boljare, and whether and which investors have been invited to participate in the Project.
Dejan Milovac
Director of the Investigative Centre MANS
