YEREVAN. – The construction of North-South road corridor started later than the stipulated date, but there were reasons for it, Armenian PM Tigran Sargsyan said.

“Armenia had no experience of building roads of similar quality even during the Soviet times. Meanwhile, this requires the appropriate knowledge and experience. As it turned out, we lacked both, and that was revealed in the course of cooperation with the Asian Development Bank.

During the tender, we had a problem with the choice of the company that was supposed to carry out the construction. There were disagreements with the Asian Bank experts. We were forced to clarify the requirements for the companies participating in the tender. This was the reason for delay,” PM Sargsyan said during a media conference on Friday.

Premier said the Armenian side experienced problems with the quality of the roads, as it is the first experience of building a modern road where speeds will be an average of 120 km/h. Finally, a famous Spanish company won the tender.

“The construction works began in 2013, and in 2014 we expect to see a large amount of work,” he said.