Albania to fully fund Durres cargo port relocation

TIRANA (Albania), January 11 (SeeNews) - Albania will fully finance the relocation of the cargo port of Durres from the state budget, prime minister Edi Rama announced.

“We will switch to domestic financing, so that we do not depend on excessive lead times and other burdens that arise from foreign financing,” Rama said in a press conference on Thursday.

In 2022, Rama had said the project would be co-financed through a public-private partnership, where the Albanian government would cover 46% of the expenses, whereas the remainder would have to be financed by an international investor.

In the 2024 state budget, the Albanian government has earmarked 43 billion leks ($450 million/412 million euro) for the new Durres port construction, it said earlier. Some 26 billion leks has been planned to finance construction costs in 2025 and 2026, when the project is set to complete.

The new port will be built in the Porto Romano area in Durres' northwestern part. The existing port in the city's southern area will accommodate a new 2 billion euro ($2.2 million) residential and marine project by United Arab Emirates-based real estate developer Emaar.

One of the reasons to hasten the new port’s construction is the involvement of a NATO naval base in the project, Rama noted. The government had been discussing potential co-financing from NATO for the base, the prime minister has said earlier.

“This is a strategic project, and it bears strategic emergency, having involved also NATO for the military part of the project. With NATO, we are at a very advanced stage of exchange of information,” Rama said on Thursday.

Albania's Durres Port Authority (DPA) said earlier this week that it will open tender procedures for the construction of the new port in the first quarter of 2024.

($=0.914 euro)

(1 euro = 104 Albanian leks)