Italy's Infrastructure Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini announced on Tuesday plans to build a €10 billion ($11 billion) Messina bridge to connect Sicily to the mainland.
An Italian-led consortium called Webuild is likely to be given the contract to construct the bridge after it won the original 2006 European tender, but the plan was later withdrawn over cost concerns.
Rome's new nationalist government has revived the project, and although it is receiving a lot of interest from foreign companies, Mr Salvini said he thought the original Italian group could keep the contract.
The government "has received expressions of interest from all over the world, including China", but the aim is to have the bridge built by Italian companies, Mr Salvini said at the Foreign Press Association in Rome.
Earlier on Tuesday, business daily Il Sole 24 Ore said the China Communications Construction Company was interested in the Messina bridge project, in an interview with its deputy general manager Pei Minshan.
"I'm happy that there is an interest from many subjects from all over the world", but the ones who won the 2006 tender "are the ones who will most likely continue with the final version of the project", Mr Salvini said.
Webuild had no comment on the minister's remarks.
"We still believe the Messina bridge project is do-able and that it would bring tremendous added value," its general manager of corporate and finance, Massimo Ferrari, told Reuters last month, as the company unveiled its 2023-2025 industrial plan.
The ambition to connect Sicily to the Italian mainland dates to ancient Roman times.
In more recent decades, a succession of Italian governments toyed with the idea but never managed to get it off the ground.
Mr Salvini said he was confident work could start in the summer of 2024 and that the proposed suspension bridge, with a record-length central span of between 3.2km and 3.3km, would be safe against winds and earthquakes.
He said the bridge was not eligible for funding from the EU-backed post-Covid recovery plan, but the government was in talks with the EU transport commissioner and the European Investment Bank over other financing options.
