Mateševo ​​(Montenegro) (AFP)

In Montenegro, a highway rips through the mountain, crosses gorges and canyons, but for now is leading nowhere.

And the pharaonic billion dollar project threatens to derail the economy of the tiny Balkan country.

After six years of construction, the quiet little village of Matesevo is the unlikely end of one of the most expensive roads in the world.

In 2014, the candidate country for the European Union contracted a loan of 944 million dollars from a Chinese bank for the construction by the Chinese company CRBC of a first section of about 40 kilometers.

"The construction is impressive and we shouldn't stop there," Dragan, 67, retired in Matesevo, told AFP.

"It would be like buying an expensive car and leaving it in the garage."

The section of the motorway connecting Matesevo and the suburbs of Podgorida is due to be inaugurated in November.

But the country of 600,000 inhabitants will still have to find more than a billion euros to complete the 130 kilometers necessary to complete the work.

The project's opponents also denounce the damage to the environment and possible corruption around a project intended to connect the Adriatic town of Bar to the south, and the Serbian border to the north, and then ultimately to Belgrade.

# photo1

- "Positive aspects" -

The inhabitants of the village, located on the banks of the Unesco heritage-listed Tara river, with the deepest gorge in Europe, try to see the bright side.

"For us, there are positive aspects. Some have managed to sell their land and leave, which was impossible before" in a poor region where emigration is high as elsewhere in the Balkans, said a villager.

Now the giant pillars of the elevated highway loom over her house and make it look like a doll's house.

# photo2

"I managed to sell vegetables and chickens to Chinese workers", he says, also assuring that the tons of earth dumped by the site have consolidated the banks of the Tara against the floods.

No one knows how to repay the Chinese loan, which accounts for a fifth of Montenegrin foreign debt.

The first deadline falls in July in a country where the GNP amounted to less than five billion euros before the coronavirus.

In the event of default, an arbitration commission in Beijing could force Montenegro to cede the management of major infrastructure, according to a copy of the contract obtained by AFP.

- SOS to the EU -

Beijing has been blamed in recent years for having caught the debt "trap" of the countries where it operates titanic infrastructures as part of its new silk roads.

China denies wanting to increase its influence in the Balkans through its investments.

# photo3

"This cooperation is mutually beneficial, it's a win-win", assures the Chinese Embassy in Montenegro.

"By putting negative labels on Chinese investments, it is not only unfair for China but also disrespecting the countries of the Balkans."

Meanwhile, Montenegro is worried.

"If we do not find sources of funding on which to rely, we will have big problems," Minister of Infrastructure Mladen Bojanic told AFP.

"We will have to assume a heavy burden".

The government has launched an SOS in Brussels, which is studying "ways to help" but "is not intended to repay loans contracted with third parties", according to Enlargement Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi.

The project was launched by the Socialist Democrats Party (DPS) of President Milo Djukanovic, which went into opposition at the end of 2020 after three decades of reign.

At the time, Mladen Bojanovic had scrapped hard against the road described as adventurous.

# photo4

NGOs like MANS speak of corruption, saying that more than a third of Montenegrin companies involved were linked to DPS.

- Secret-

There was no public tender, the work is not transparent, according to Dejan Milovac, head of the NGO.

"The decisions were taken out of sight and that is what we are not paying today."

The government has promised to investigate.

Environmentalists are standing up against the damage inflicted on the Tara bed even though the CRBC has undertaken to rehabilitate it over a few hundred meters.

The road aims to promote tourism and develop poor regions by shortening journeys through sumptuous but rugged landscapes.

# photo5

Today, the government recognizes that the expected revenues from tolls would not even be sufficient to ensure maintenance, estimated at 77 million euros annually.

"It would take at least 22 or 25,000 vehicles a day to make the highway profitable", which is far more than the expected traffic, explains to AFP Ivan Kekovic, an engineer who withdrew from the project.

Zelko Rajkovic, 55, a teacher in the Kolasin ski resort near Matesevo, confirms.

Taking the highway to the capital would be safer and cut the journey time by three.

But that would be expensive in tolls.

"I will take the new road only if there is a big storm or an emergency."

© 2021 AFP