Bulgaria would need more than two billion euro to complete four key highways in the next decade, the Government said on July 6.

The country’s national strategy for integrated infrastructure development calls for 720km of new highways to be completed by 2015, the Cabinet said on its website.

Bulgaria, which hopes to join the EU in 2007, has since the late 1990s been delaying the completion of key highways linking the capital with its Black Sea ports, and the country with neighbouring Greece and Turkey.

It is estimated that the planned 114 km highway to link Bulgaria with Turkey, called Maritsa, will cost about 361 million euro and since part of the motorway construction has been funded so far by the state budget, the Government plans to complete it with national co-funding and EU funds, the statement said.

Bulgaria plans to finish the Maritsa highway construction in 2009.

The highways Strouma, linking Bulgaria with Greece, and Hemus, to link the capital Sofia with the Black Sea city of Varna, will preferably be constructed through public-private partnership, it added.

The feasibility studies for the route of the 172 km Strouma highway have almost been completed and expert estimates put the construction costs at 600 million euro by 2012.

Bulgaria awarded the design of the Strouma highway to Italy’s SPEA in 2000.

Hemus highway also has complete project documentation and approved route and its construction is estimated at one billion euro, the statement said.

Bulgaria will grant a build-and-operate concession to Italian Salini Costruttori to build the remaining 285 kilometres of the 425 km highway.

The project documents for the 95 km Black Sea highway, linking Varna and Bourgas, are shortly to be completed by 2017 as the project is estimated at 400 million euro, the statement said.

Bulgaria granted last year a 715 million euro build-and-operate concession on a 443 km motorway linking its western border with the Black Sea port of Bourgas (the Trakia highway) to a Bulgarian-Portuguese consortium