The government on Friday announced a new tender for the first phase of the road which will connect Paphos and Polis Chrysochous.

The first phase will connect the village of Ayia Marinouda, just outside Paphos, and the village of Stroumbi, which is located roughly halfway between the road’s two endpoints – a distance of around 15.5 kilometres.

The road is, according to the government, to be built with two lanes of traffic and one crawler lane “where required, with the prospect of construction of the other two lanes in a future phase”.

As such, the road will not, at least at first, be a dual carriageway.

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The tender’s cost has been estimated at €90.2 million plus value added tax, while the project is expected to take 30 months to complete.

If a bidder is found, construction will continue where it left off last year when the government cancelled a contract with Greek construction company Intrakat.

The government had said at the time that despite repeated reminders and warnings during regular meetings and through official letters, Intrakat reportedly failed to address in the road’s construction.

It added that even tasks initiated in the final eight months prior to the contract’s termination had not progressed as expected, despite conditions that allowed for uninterrupted work.

Transport Minister Alexis Vafeades had been asked at a House transport committee meeting earlier this year whether Cyprus benefitted from the cancellation of that contract, and said the termination of any project “is a setback”, but that “in some cases, a contract must be terminated to be able to move forward, lest you constantly go backwards or remain stagnant”.

He explained that the project “had to be terminated based on the regulations that the state must follow”, before touching on the matter of the cost of the project so far, saying the value of the work performed by Intrakat was around €16 million, and that 90 per cent of that figure was paid for by the government.

“Therefore, based on this, one can easily discern that we have not lost money,” he said.