(Company official corrects in headline and first paragraph value of deal to 3 billion euro, not 11 billion yuan, and in second paragraph project timeframe to about eight years, not to be completed in 2018)
BEIJING, Nov 26 (Reuters) - China Pacific Construction Group (CPCG), the country’s largest private builder by revenue, signed a 3 billion euro ($3.19 billion) deal to build an expressway between Montenegro and Albania, the company said.
Construction of the 280 kilometre link will begin in the second half of 2016 and take about eight years to complete, it said.
The firm plans to use toll rights as collateral for the project, chairman Yan Jiehe told reporters at a briefing in Beijing on Thursday. Financing has yet to be finalised, he said.
CPCG’s foray into Europe follows Beijing’s encouragement of domestic firms to look overseas for business opportunities, the so-called “go out” policy.
The highway deal comes a day after a consortium led by China Railway Group (CRG) said it had been awarded a 10 billion yuan ($1.57 billion) contract to build the Hungarian section of a railway linking Budapest with Belgrade in Serbia, China’s first high-speed rail win in the European Union.
Premier Li Keqiang said at a summit with central and eastern European leaders in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou on Tuesday that China was willing to provide more flexible funding conditions to those countries to upgrade their infrastructure as long as they used Chinese equipment and products. ($1 = 0.9419 euros) (Reporting by Winni Zhou and Nick Heath. Editing by Jane Merriman)
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