A major international company has announced its interest to take up the planned Kicevo - Gostivar highway under concession, Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said on Wednesday. If realized, this would be the first major highway construction project built with outside funding.

"There is an agreement in principle with a large international company, that announced it will make a bid at the upcoming opening of the concession procedure for the Kicevo - Gositvar highway. If they accept the conditions, which they have indicated they find acceptable up to now, Macedonia will work on yet another expensive highway project", Gruevski told Kanal 5 TV station in an interview on Wednesday evening.

Macedonia is currently working on two highways, Skopje - Stip and Kicevo - Ohrid, both built by a credit line from the Chinese bank for reconstruction and development. The country has tried and failed to bring in foreign investors in the projects, who would then collect the tolls on the highway during a certain period of time. The new announcement from the Prime Minister would open the door to complete the Skopje - Ohrid highway in the worst part of the terrain, across the Bistra Mountains.

After the Corridor 10 Skopje - Gevgelija highway, that connects Serbia with Greece through Macedonia, the road to Ohrid is the busiest one in the country. It could potentially be a link to southern Albania, and the port of Durres. But, it is a highway in only about a third of the route, the remainder crossing mountains and valleys. With the construction of the Kicevo - Ohrid highway, the worst part of the terrain will be last one left.

In his interview, Gruevski said that right now about 1.500 workers are engaged on the two highways under construction, 1.100 of which are Macedonians and the rest mainly Chinese.

"There are 215 construction machines working on the Skopje - Stip highway, most of them Macedonian. On the Kicevo - Ohrid highway, 190 machines are active, almost all Macedonian. These projects help decrease unemployment in the country, and will have a major, long term effect in that different regions of the country will be better connected", Gruevski said.

The Skopje - Stip highway will be extended with an express way from Stip to Kocani, the Prime Minister added, while the highway to Ohrid will also be extended to Struga, close to the Albanian border, as well as to the village of Peshtani, en route to the monastery of St. Naum. Another region left without a proper highway, the Pelagonija region, will get an express way from the Corridor 10 highway to Prilep, again over some of the roughest terrain in the country. Construction of this road is planned to begin by the end of 2015.