GD's Infrastructure Minister Revaz Sokhadze says the remaining unopened sections of the Samtredia–Grigoleti highway will be completed this spring, while reconstruction of the Rioni Bridge will finish in early 2027. Two segments - 6 km and 3 km long - are still closed, and the major bridge collapsed on 21 February 2023, delaying full operation of the corridor.
According to Sokhadze, construction is progressing intensively on all unfinished stretches. “By late spring, two sections in Guria will open, and we expect the Samtredia bridge section to be operational at the beginning of next year,” he said. The ministry opened the most recent 8-kilometer segment in December 2025.
The current contractor, China’s state-owned Hunan Road & Bridge Construction Group, has been building the final section since September 2022 under a 324.6 million GEL contract. While the project was originally supposed to take two years, deadlines were pushed back to December 2025.
The highway was initially expected to open in 2020. The first contract, signed in 2017 with Italian-Kazakh firm Todini, fell apart when the company failed to make adequate progress. After the government terminated the contract, it launched a new tender and began an arbitration dispute with Todini involving hundreds of millions.
