Sofia municipality will make an advance payment of 60 million leva for the construction of the metro stretch linking the northern borough of Nadezhda to Cherni Vruh Boulevard in the centre of the city.

Councilors are scheduled to vote on September 10 on allocating a further 241 million leva to the project. Half of the amount should come under European Union’s operational programme Transport and the rest from the state budget.

The contractors, Turkish company Dogus Insaat and Bulgarian consortium Metrotrace, are to break ground on the project by the end of the year. Construction, under the terms of the contract signed in August, has to be completed in 45 months.

Dogus Insaat, the construction subsidiary of Dogus group, one of Turkey’s biggest privately-owned business conglomerates, offered the lowest price on the 3.8km stretch between Nadezhda flyover and Patriarh Evtimii Boulevard, which will have four stations. The company offered 329.1 million leva to build the stretch.

Metrotrace, a consortium of companies from the Bulgarian construction group Trace Holding, wuoold build the 2.6km stretch between Patriarh Evtimii and Cherni Vruh boulevards, with three stations, for 142 million leva.

By 2012, Sofia’s metro system is planned to expand to 31km of rails and carry 420 000 people every day.