On 24 October 2016, during the Belarusian and Polish Economic Forum of “Dobrosąsiedztwo 2016” in Minsk, attended by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish companies trading as TINES SA and UNIBEP SA signed – together with the executive committee of the city of Vitebsk – the memorandum concerning the modernisation of 20 km of tramways. The project implemented in the model of “design and construct” is planned for the years 2017-2020.
The document also includes the preparation of a business plan and raising of funds for granting of export credit which are necessary for the implementation of the project. Vitebsk is one of four Belarusian cities with tramway system. Each day, the public transport in the city is used by more than 250 thousand passengers. The memorandum signed provides for the modernisation of sections whose total length equals to more than 55% of length of all tramways in the city.
“The years of presence in the markets of the East and the scope of completed projects enabled us to gain unique experience in the area of infrastructure. We are ready and willing to implement huge export projects”, says Tomasz Szuba, the President of TINES SA.
“As the general contractor, we have completed several considerable construction projects in Russia and Belarus. The execution of this memorandum is an example proving that when Polish companies act together, they may be more effective in winning big infrastructural projects outside Poland”, says Jan Mikołuszko, the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of UNIBEP SA.
Both TINES S.A. and UNIBEP SA are big companies with great experience in completion of contracts in the East. The portfolio of the TINES group from Cracow, whose business activity includes but is not limited to the production of state-of-the-art structures of railways, comprises the projects of modernisation of tramways in St. Petersburg, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk, as well as contracts for the construction of the underground in Almaty, Kiev, and Minsk. On the other hand, UNIBEP SA belongs to the group of the biggest construction companies in Poland. It is also the biggest Polish exporter of construction services. The projects accomplished by this company in the Eastern markets include e.g. the construction of hotels in Kalinigrad, St. Petersburg, Moscow and Minsk.