Under the co-financing agreement, the modernisation of the existing track and the construction of a new one should be completed before the end of 2023 in order for the agreed sum to be paid out in full, which Jutarnji List says is unlikely to happen.
The people contacted by Jutarnji List claim that around 90 per cent of the work is expected to be completed by the end of 2023, and the whole project would be finalised in 2024. In that case, Croatia would have to pay the remaining 10 percent or so of the value of the work from its own budget.
The value of the contract with a domestic consortium is HRK 1.2 billion (€160m), and the European Commission is co-financing the project with 85 percent.
Around 70 percent of the work has been done so far, the newspaper said.
The contract for the construction of this section of the railway was signed in 2016 and should have been completed in 2020. The deadline has now been extended until 2024, which means that the work on the 38.2-kilometre-long section would take as many as eight years to finish.
In that way, the completion of this section would coincide with the completion of work on the Križevci to Koprivnica line, which started in 2020, four years after the work on the Dugo Selo to Križevci line began, Jutarnji List said.
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