Ten million euros this year as an additional amount will be paid by the Public Enterprise State Roads to the Chinese Exim Bank for the Kicevo-Ohrid highway, the construction of which, at least according to the latest annex agreement, should be completed by the end of 2023.

What the Enterprise did not mention during the presentation of the annual program for 2023 is that, in addition to 4.33 billion denars for the payment of the principal amount and 780 million denars for the repayment of interest to foreign creditors, 600 million denars will also be needed for payment to the Ministry for finance for reprogrammed debt to the Chinese, analyzes factor.mk.

The debt to the Ministry of Finance results from the repayments of the annuities to Exim Bank, which were carried out by the Ministry of Finance for the Public Enterprise, and then agreements were concluded for the reprogramming of the debt, i.e. repayment of it in 84 monthly installments, according to the program of the public enterprise.

It is not known whether the Ministry of Finance borrowed from another international credit institution for the payment of this extraordinary debt, but it is known from before that there is, as it was said, a need to “provide additional financial resources resulting from unforeseen and additional matters”.

Five million euros for debt repayment through the Ministry of Finance were also foreseen in the “State Roads” program for 2022, while in previous years there was no such item.

The repayment of the annual installment for the construction of the Kicevo-Ohrid highway to the Chinese Exim Bank has grown to 33.7 million euros, according to the annual report of the public company “State Roads” for 2021.

This amount is received in one year because the six-month annuity that is paid for the construction of the highway section every half year is 16,834,832 euros for the last year.

This is the first time such a radical change in the price of the famous highway has been recorded if it is known that previously the semi-annual installment always amounted to 9,962,521 euros, that is, at the annual level it was 19.9 million euros. This means that now the difference, with the imposed price increase, which we pay is 13.8 million euros per year.