On August 23, the Minister of Public Works, Housing and Water Resources, Carlos Mesquita, announced the launch of the public tender to hire the contractors to rehabilitate National Road Number One (N1), after several postponements due to the demands of the World Bank.

This is the implementation of Phase-1 of the N1 rehabilitation project, which covers a total of 1.100 kilometers (Km), with around five lots, between Metoro-Pemba (94km) in Cabo Delgado province; Gorongosa - Caia Lot 1 (0-84km), Gorongosa - Caia Lot 2 (84-168km) and Inchope - Gorongosa (70km) in Sofala province, Chimuara; Nicoadala Lot 1 (0-88km) and Chimuara - Nicoadala Lot 2 (88-176km), in Zambezia province, whose rehabilitation and maintenance works are budgeted at 400 million US dollars.

Carlos Mesquita made this revelation in Inchope, Manica province, where he was on his monitoring trip along the N1, which began in Maputo and includes Chimoio, Inchope, Gorongosa, Caia, Quelimane, Mocuba, Guruè, Magige, Lioma, Malema, Nampula and Angoche.

The launch of the tender, he explained, is the result of painstaking work over two consecutive years, culminating in the approval of the World Bank, the project's financier, on August 19.
The government expects to receive bids from interested contractors on November 1st of this year, after the tender has been published in the press on August 23rd: "It's a ten-year project, with two years for rehabilitation and eight years for maintenance. We plan to launch three or four other tenders between now and December this year," said Carlos Mesquita.