Of 17.6 million convertible marks (EUR 9 million) of available funds, 2.8 million (EUR 1.43 million) will be set aside to make documents needed for the construction of the highway section.
It was said that the document in question refers to a section running from Pocitelj via Neum and Trebinje to the border with Montenegro.
This means that the Adriatic-Ionian highway section to run through Bosnia and Herzegovina would be built as a continuation of the Croatian Dalmatina highway (connecting Zagreb with the Adriatic coast) which enters Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Nova Sela-Bijaca border crossing.
From that border crossing, a highway section of about 10 kilometres in length has been built to Medjugorje, and preparations are currently under way to extend it by about 20 kilometres to Pocitelj.
The prime ministers of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Albania agreed at a meeting in Cavtat, Croatia, this past summer on the need to build the Adriatic-Ionian highway, but there was no talk of its final route at the time.
The authorities of the Croatian southernmost coastal county of Dubrovnik strongly advocate that the highway pass through Croatia because they fear transport isolation in case the highway passed through Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Apart from approving additional funding for documents on the Adriatic-Ionian highway, the Bosnian government also decided to set aside an additional four million euros for the construction of a new bridge over the Sava River at Gradiska. The bridge would connect to an already built highway section running to Banja Luka.
Two million euros was also set aside for the construction of another bridge on the Sava River, at Svilaja, which is an integral part of the Bosnian section of the pan-European 5C corridor linking Budapest and the Croatian port of Ploce.