With the failure of meeting in Washington, Kosovo lost millions of projects, Abrashi says the US supported us

The failure of the June 27th meeting in Washington, in addition to the possibility of resolving the agreement with Serbia, left Kosovo even without five important strategic projects, Online Economy reports.

Infrastructure Minister Arba Abrashi, although attending this meeting, he had only traveled to present parts of very important projects for the economy in the country.

In an interview for Online Economics, Abrashi has spoken about these projects, as he feels bad that this meeting failed, which he says has received support from Americans and from the country's prime minister, Avdullah Hoti, that these projects be conducted as co-finance.

The trip of Prime Minister Hoti to Washington has received much political attention and has been talked about dialogue, but the basic emphasis has been the economy. That's why I was part of the team because I traveled separately. The idea has been to meet there, where I have been able to present at least five projects and there I feel bad that this meeting in Washington has not taken place because I think that at least with two good projects for Kosovo I had turned back, I'm not saying with the fifth, but at least with two”, he said, saying it is huge damage to the country's failure.

Abrashi has shown what projects this is about. He says he has been aiming at these projects to seek finances and soft loans, while he says he has also received the support of Prime Minister Hoti.

In the introductions I've had in Washington, I've wanted to introduce him and look for finance, soft loans. Prime Minister Hoti has given me permission to guarantee and pledge that the government of Kosovo will provide at least 200m euros so that others can receive as loans and grants for a large number of strategic projects for Kosovo”.

The first “is the continuation of the highway from Truda to Merdar, which is the big strategic project, and it has a huge cost and it's hard with our finances to finance. The second, Railway, from Fushe-Kosovo until Merdar, then connected to Nis from now on. Third, within the construction of the Pristina Railway Highway and the unification of Pristina with the region, the project that has had to be introduced has been a multimodal station in Pristina, a large bus station, of trains, of cars, which had signed up the entire great circulation that had happened along this railway highway, which takes on the international characters”, he said.

Among the projects he was going to present in Washington, Abrashi says that a project has to do with a section of the <x0 highway.

The fourth project was that a new section of the Ibrahim Rugova Highway was built because you know that from Fushe-Kosovo to Orlat is a national road and that when we built the highway to Merdar and the Dukagjin highway, this part of the national road couldn't bear the huge flow of cars because it's a national way to 11x1>

Therefore I have proposed a assistance to a highway that runs up to Lipjan but then it connects to Duhel in order to download this remaining”, he said.

The 5th project concerns bringing the gas pipeline to Kosovo from Macedonia. He says this project would greatly help Kosovo's economy, which says Americans have been interested in supporting this project. Abrashi for EO indicated that this project has been done with co-finance, a soft loan and the rest as grant,

The fifth project has been the gas infrastructure -- a gas pipeline from Macedonia to Obilic -- which had to help the Kosovo economy many and many Americans have been very interested in supporting this project”.

This project, however, has been a part of co-finance, a soft and other grant loan, so this has been the formula with which we are prepared to go to the U.S., and Prime Minister Hoti has given me full competition to sit down and see which of these deals we can benefit and show that we are willing to enter the co-finance and take out on loan<1>.

“Unfortunately the failure of the U.S. trip has also made these projects remain on paper, but I have again had conversations with officials in the US, because even before I left I talked to them and discussed, so I now believe there will be movement, I have discussed the idea of remaining in the hope that these projects will be realised”, Abrashi added, while saying that if all projects are not realised, at least optimistic that two of them will be realised.