This article is part of a daily series of MegaProjects articles. If you want to know more about PPP projects with a considerable size visit our MegaProjects section. You can receive them by email on a daily basis.

Autostrada Pedemontana Lombarda, the consortium that is developing Italy's Pedemontana Lombarda highway public private partnership (PPP) project, has published a notice on the official Journal of the European Union seeking financiers to complete the project.

Specifically the consortium aims to close a €2.6 billion of senior loan for construction works, a €200 million of senior loan to refinance a bridge loan,  a €350 million VAT loan and a credit line of €200 million.

The consortium is composed by Milano Serravalle - Milano Tangenziali (78.97%), Equiter (13.36%), Intesa Sanpaolo (4.01%), UBI Banca (3.34%), and Par. Cop. Soc. Cons. (0.32%).

The total project investment is estimated at €3.5 billion (US$3.94 billion).

The project involves the development of a 67 km motorway, 20 km of bypass roads (11km stretch in Como and a 9km stretch in Varese) and 70 km of road connections (one lane in each direction). It will conect five provinces, including Bergamo, Monza e Brianza, Milan, Como, and Varese.

The 67 km motorway has been divided into five sections: a 15 km road between A8 Milano-Varese and A9 Milano-Como, a 7.5 km road between A9 junction and SP ex SS 35 road, a  9.5 km road between Lentate sul Seveso and Cesano Maderno, a 16.5 km road between Cesano Maderno and the junction of Tangenziale Est / A51 highway and a 18.5 km road between Tangenziale Est/A51 and A4 highway at Osio Sotto, Bergamo.

Thus far, only the first section of the route, in the province of Varese, has been built, but with costs so high that most of the public money initially earmarked for the whole route has already been spent. In order to address the financial problem, and seeing as no investors were forthcoming, the Italian Government decided to apply Article 18 of Law 183/2011 which provides tax breaks to the extent that the companies who will complete the outstanding work will be exempt from tax.

The first 15 km stretch was completed in January this year by construction consortium, which is comprised of Salini Impregilo (47%) Astaldi (24%), Impresa Pizzarotti (18%) and Itinera (11%).