Representatives of the Rijeka-Zagreb Highway company and the European Investment Bank (EIB) on Thursday signed a loan agreement worth EUR 210 million to finance a 44.26 kilometer section of the Rijeka-Zagreb highway running from Kikovica to the Stara Sušica viaduct as a two-lane dual carriageway.
The loan agreement was signed by the president of the Rijeka-Zagreb Highway management board, Jurica Prskalo, and EIB vice-president Wolfgang Roth. Roth and Croatian Finance Minister Ivan Šuker later signed an agreement on government collateral for the loan.
The deadline for the repayment of the loan, the highest the EIB has ever granted Croatia, is 25 years, with a grace period of five years. 
The interest rate is EURIBOR plus 0.13 percent. Other loan-related fees have not been agreed on. The loan will be returned from the Zagreb-Rijeka Highway's road toll revenue.
The project, which is the II B stage of the Rijeka-Zagreb highway, is expected to be completed by the end of 2008.
The Kikovica-Stara Sušica section will include six kilometers of viaducts and more than 10 kilometers of tunnels, which makes 27 percent of the section, Prskalo said.
Works on the II A section of the highway - the 11.3 kilometer two-lane dual carriageway from Bosiljevo to Stara Sušica, are under way.
The three-kilometre Kupjak-Vrbovsko section will be opened to traffic this summer, and works on the 8.2 kilometer section from Vrbovsko to Bosiljevo will be completed until 2007.
The signing of the loan agreement was attended by Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, who said that the highway would facilitate access to the Adriatic for Europeans and improve the quality of life in Croatia.
In a few years Croatia will have a highway network that will become part of the future Adriatic-Ionian highway, he added.
The government will support the project of winter games in the Gorski Kotar region, he said, announcing a project to build a lowland-railway linking Rijeka with Zagreb.
Transport Minister Božidar Kalmeta, who also attended the event, spoke about investments in the road infrastructure in the area of Rijeka.
Investments in the road infrastructure in that area between 2005 and 2008 will amount to 3.7 billion kunas, which is more than 10 percent of all road investments in the country, Kalmeta said. (Hina)