Six new border points between Bulgaria and Greece are scheduled to be opened by 2012, Bulgarian Deputy Regional Development Minister Dimcho Mihalevski said in Greece, as quoted by Bulgarian National Radio and website mediapool.bg.

Mihalevski is currently on a visit to Bulgaria's southern neighbour, where he is discussing policies on construction and rehabilitation of roads leading to the existent and future border points on the Bulgarian-Greek border.

Bulgaria's ambitions are to open two of the border points - near Ivailovgrad and Zlatograd - as of the summer of 2009, Mihalevski said. The road from Ivailovrgad to the Greek town of Kyprinos is almost finished and is expected to be ready by end-March 2009, he said.

Regarding the road from Zlatograd to the Greek town of Thermes, Bulgaria has completed a new 4km section and about a kilometre is left to the border point, which is also scheduled to be completed within the first three months of 2009, Mihalevski said.

The roads from Kurdjali to Makaza and from Roudozem to Xanthi, where other border points will be erected, are currently being worked on. There is a ready work project for the Smolyan-Gorna Arda-Paranésti road. The border point projects will help open the Bulgarian-Greek border and encourage the economic and cultural development of the Sea of Marmara and Rhodope mountains transborder region, Mihalevski said.

Currently there are only three working border points on the 500km-long border between the two countries: at Koulata-Promahon, Ilinden-Exohi and Novo selo-Ormeninon.

Over the next weeks, Bulgaria's National Road Infrastructure Agency will announce a competition for the construction of two lots of the Strouma highway - Dolna Dikanya-Doupnitsa and Koulata-Sandanski, Mihalevski added.