ZAGREB (Croatia), April 16 (SeeNews) - The construction of the Peljesac bridge and its access roads in southern Croatia is going on as scheduled, despite the coronavirus outbreak, transport minister Oleg Butkovic said on Thursday.

This means that the pillars of the future bridge have been installed and now works are being focused on the construction and installation of the steel structure of the bridge, while works on building the access road have also been launched, Butkovic said in a statement at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting.

The construction of the Peljesac bridge started in July 2018 after Croatian road operator Hrvatske Ceste (HC) signed a 2.08 billion kuna ($298 million/274 million euro) deal for the implementation of the project with a Chinese consortium led by CRBC. Croatia hopes to see construction works completed in January 2021.

The bridge will connect the peninsula of the same name with the rest of mainland Croatia over the Adriatic, providing an alternative route to crossing the Neum Corridor - a strip of the Adriatic coastline situated in Bosnia and Herzegovina between these two parts of Croatia.

The Peljesac bridge will be 55 m high and 2.4 km long, with four lanes.

In October 2019, Croatia signed the two deals worth some 990 million kuna in total, hiring Austria's Strabag and Greece's Avax for the construction of the Peljesac bridge's access roads.

In November, HC brought in Strabag and its local partners to works on the 12 km long Duboka-Sparagovici road section, which represents the northern access road to the bridge. Strabag has offered to build the section for 487 million kuna in 33 months.

Later on, in December, Avax started building the southern access road to the bridge, i.e. the 18 km long sections Sparagovici-Prapratno and Prapratno-Doli, pledging to build the two sections for 511 million kuna in 28 months.

(1 euro = 7.59912 kuna)