SKOPJE (Macedonia), July 2 (SeeNews) - A consortium led by Mott MacDonald and including consulting firms WYG and Atkins has been awarded a contract by the European Commission to help strengthen essential infrastructure development across the Western Balkans, the tie-up said on Monday.
The consortium will provide technical assistance as part of the Infrastructure Projects' Facility (IPF) of the Western Balkans Investment Framework (WBIF), it said in a statement.
The IPF prepares priority infrastructure projects in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Kosovo.
As part of the IPF, the consortium will provide technical support and advice ranging from pre-feasibility and feasibility studies, economic and financial analysis, environmental and social impact assessments, preliminary and detailed design drawings and supervision of works, to assess the technical, economic and financial strength of projects.
Launched in December 2009, the WBIF pools financial resources from the European Commission, International Financial Institutions (IFIs), and bi-lateral donors to finance projects that are key to socio-economic development in the Western Balkans. The IPF assists with the preparation of infrastructure projects as part of the lending process of the IFIs, and EU grants.
Almost 5.0 billion British pounds ($7.8 billion/6.2 billion euro) in loans and grants have been made as part of the WBIF programme since 2009.
(1 euro = 0.8051 British pounds)