Takutu Bridge contract awarded -- newspaper reports

Guyana Chronicle
January 28, 2007

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AFTER substantial delay, the Brazilian government has awarded a US$5.3M contract to complete construction of the Takutu Bridge across the border Takutu River between Guyana and Brazil in the Rupununi.

According to a report in the newspaper, Folha de Boa Vista, the contract has been awarded to Arte Leste of Curitiba from the State of Parana, for the sum of R$11.4M.

The contract would be supervised by the 6th Engineers Battalion of the Brazilian Army, who will themselves carry out the approaches to the bridge, the report stated.

The contractor should start work in the first fortnight of February and complete construction of the bridge in one year, Folha de Boa Vista reported.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who visited Guyana mid-February 2005, had pledged to restart the long-stalled border bridge project and to push plans for a highway between Georgetown and Boa Vista.

The two countries have long talked about a bridge across the Takutu River and Brazil is interested in a road link to a deep water harbour on the Guyana coast to ship grains and other exports from its Roraima state to Europe, the Caribbean and North America through the Atlantic.

The bridge, a critical link in the proposed all-weather highway between the Guyana capital and Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima state in Brazil, has been a dream for decades.

The road to Guyana could also get exports out of the giant Sao Paulo industrial centre through Boa Vista, Brazilian officials have said.

But a snafu which hit the project has stalled work on the Takutu Bridge since 2001.

There can be no political, cultural or economic integration without physical integration. It is in Brazil’s interest; it is in the interest of Guyana. Brazil needs this; Guyana needs this. That’s why we have to inaugurate the bridge, and that is a commitment,” Lula said in Guyana’s Parliament on his visit here.