WESTERN BUREAU – The government yesterday announced a further half-year delay in the completion date for the 95-kilometre stretch of the North Coast Highway between Montego Bay and Ocho Rios – now saying that the job will finish at the end of 2005.

Prime Minister P J Patterson, reconfirmed that the project will cost US$20 million (J$1.22 billion) more than the initially projected US$80 million. But the cost of utilities and land acquisition, design changes and inflation will push the project from US$100 million to US$120 million.

“With the variations that have occurred, including those that would have arisen because of the cost of the materials such as steel, asphalt, labour and variations in the scope of work, we are now talking in the region of US$100 million,”

Patterson said. But a government official told the Observer last night that the figure given by Patterson did not include the cost of utilities and land acquisition, design changes and inflation.

When work began in October 2001 on this segment of the North Coast Highway – which will eventually run from Negril in the west to the eastern parish of Portland – the completion date was last April.

But last September officials reported that work would continue until early 2005 and in May the junior minister for transport and works, Fenton Ferguson, said it would be further delayed to June next year.

Patterson said yesterday that the highway will now be completed by the end of 2005.

According to Patterson, the extra costs and the additional time were, in part, dictated by the major tourism developments on the island’s north shore, much of it being driven by Spanish hotel chains.

Even more changes could well take place, Patterson suggested.

“With the addition of some 3,000 hotel rooms in this neck of the woods over the next five years, we have to anticipate that and put in the roadway infrastructure from now,” the prime minister said. “We also have to make sure, particularly in the area near Duncans (a community in Trelawny where a multi-hotel resort development is planned), that we can lay the pipeline to provide the water for the massive hotel construction that will take place there before the end of this calendar year.”

Changes already incorporated in the project, according to project director at the Northern Jamaica Development Project (NJDB), Desmond Malcolm, include:

. the addition of bypasses and underpasses;

. paving of shoulders of the roadway;

. the relocation of utilities;

. more alignments; and

. the establishment of a four-lane road from the vicinity of the Sangster airport in Montego Bay to the Sea Castle hotel area in Rose Hall. The original plan was to have the four-lane roadway from the airport round-about to Ironshore.

This segment of the highway project is being partially financed by US$60.4 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The government has to find the rest.

Like this portion of the highway, the first segment, the 75-kilometre stretch from Montego Bay to Negril, was plagued by time and cost over-runs.

Started in 1997, it was opened in late 2002, three years behind schedule and US$47.7 million more than the US$25 million original Korean contractors, Bosung, had bid. Bosung apparently bid low, hoping to get a toe-hold in the Caribbean but ran out of cash in wake of the Asian financial crisis, forcing the government to pick up the slack.

The government had promised to start the final segment of the highway, between Ocho Rios and Fair Prospect in Portland, this fiscal year but has not recently spoken on the issue.

Yesterday, however, Patterson was clear on the government’s commitment to the Montego Bay to Ocho Rios segment.

“The money provided by the IDB is fixed, so whatever additional sums that are involved we will find it,” the prime minister said. “And so far we have provided the sums in this year’s budget that is necessary during the fiscal year 2004/2005, and in the next year’s budget we will provide adequate funds for its completion.”

Patterson said he was very impressed and pleased with the level of work that has taken place on the project and indicated that portions could soon be opened.

“There are some sections of the roadway, particularly in

Duncans and Braco, that are very, very far advanced and I am of the view that we should try and make them open and accessible to the general travelling public as quickly as possible,” he said.