Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borisov formally launched the construction of the last section of the Trakiya Highway, the first highway to run from Sofia to the Black Sea coast.

"There are 7 highway projects in Bulgaria. We will built three highways by the end of our first term (2013 – editor's note), and four highways in our next term," declared Borisov near Yambol at the groundbreaking ceremony of Lot 4, Trakiya's last section linking the city of Yambol and the town of Karnobat.

The PM expressed his hopes that the Trakiya Highway will be completed by June 2012 ahead of the scheduled deadline – August 2012 – so that Bulgarians can go to the Black Sea beaches for their vacations in the 2012 summer.

The Bulgarian Road Infrastructure picked "Holding Roads" as winner in the tender for building of the 49km section of Trakiya Highway, also known as Lot 4.

The offer of the Bulgarian company is BGN 174.7 M, VAT excluded.

Bulgaria's tie-in "Unified Highway Trace" won the tender for the construction of the 32-kilometer-long section of the Trakiya, linking the city of Stara Zagora and the town ofNova Zagora, at the end of February and a month later signed a contract with the Bulgarian Road Infrastructure Agency.

The Bulgarian consortium submitted the lowest bid - BGN 137,86 M – in competition with three other approved applicants. 4 000 jobs will be created by the project in the Stara Zagora region.

Construction works are scheduled to be completed in 25 months. The price of the construction is estimated at about BGN 138 M, 30-35 % of the funds will be made available by the end of the year.

Greece's Aktor placed the lowest price offer of EUR 111.6 M in a tender for the construction of 35.7 kilometres of Bulgaria's Trakiya motorway, that would link the towns of Nova Zagora and Yambol, in southern Bulgaria.

After the 19-km Lyulin highway near Sofia, Trakiya is the Bulgarian highway project which is closest to completion. It will connect the capital Sofia with the Black Sea city of Burgas. A total of 328 km of the 443-km highway have already been built.

Earlier on Friday, before the Trakiya groundbreaking ceremony, PM Borisov inspected the construction of the Lyulin Highway near Sofia.