Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Vladyslav Krykliy has said that first road concession road projects could be launched next year.
‘I won’t say this year, since this should be approached very carefully. But next year it is likely that we will launch the first concession roads. However, we are already talking to potential concessionaires. There are companies that have experience in managing concession roads in Europe, they apply, they are ready to initiate some small pilot projects with us in order to understand the volumes of traffic,” the minister said.
He said that the first possible concession projects could be for sections of the Kyiv-Bila Tserkva, Lviv-Krakovets roads, as well as part of the Kyiv’s orbital road.
Krykliy also noted the need to maintain the requirement on the mandatory duplication of the toll road as its free alternative.
According to the minister, earlier the Infrastructure Ministry’s team planned to work with concession projects in the road industry through the adoption of a bill on road concessions. “But the general concession law has already been worked out by both relevant committees and MPs, which covers much more – not only roads, but also other infrastructure projects. We need to follow – it will be placed on the agenda [for voting by the Verkhovna Rada] in the coming weeks,” Krykliy said.
He also said that the Infrastructure Ministry has a lot of infrastructure concession projects and the ministry team is looking forward to the adoption of a profile bill as soon as possible.
