Argentina opens new Rosario beltway

Argentine President Mauricio Macri and transport minister Guillermo Dietrich opened the new beltway (in photo) around the port city of Rosario in Santa Fe province, which required 2.8bn pesos (US$76mn) and took nine years to complete.

The project, which was funded by the federal government, entailed turning a 19km stretch into a six lane highway, while the remaining 10km were turned into an eight lane highway, the presidency's office said in a release.

Works also included completely repaving the existing road, the construction of an access road to Villa Gobernador Galvez, a footbridge, an access bridge leading to Rosario's Baigorria avenue, and works on the beltway's connections to routes N°9, N°11, N°33, N°34 and the Rosario-Santa Fe highway, as well as to provincial routes N°18 and N°21, according to a report from state news agency Télam.

During the opening, Dietrich said that while the works had originally started in 2009, by 2016 the project had only advanced 50%.

"In less than two years we opened the greater part of this beltway, with the additional lanes and today we completed the last stretch with the connection with national route N°34, a route that will become a highway in the next PPP tenders," he said.

One of the projects in the transport ministry's PPP program that has been already been awarded, road corridor E (US$1bn), involves converting a 14km section of route N°34 into a divided highway, while works on other sections of the same road are included in corridors I and H, which are scheduled to be tendered this quarter.