Italy's planned bridge to Sicily sees costs ballooning

ROME (Reuters) - A project to build a bridge connecting the Italian mainland to the island of Sicily will cost as much as 14.6 billion euros ($16.14 billion), a Treasury document showed, a near-50% increase compared with previous government estimates.

The bridge project, which has been in the planning stages for decades, appeared to have been killed off in 2013 by former Prime Minister Mario Monti, who closed down the company created to oversee its construction during an austerity drive.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government revived it shortly after taking office in October last year and said an Italian-led consortium was likely to be given the contract to build the around 5-km-long (3.11 miles) suspension bridge.

Meloni's nationalist government initially estimated the cost of the works at 10 billion euros.

But the Treasury's Economic and Financial Document (DEF) approved this week forecast construction costs of 13.5 billion euros for the bridge itself, with a further 1.1 billion euros needed to improve rail links between Sicily and the southern Calabria region that makes up the toe of mainland Italy.

The DEF also highlighted that funds for the project had still not been allocated.

The government aims to finance it from the budgets of regional governments, state funds to be allocated in next year's budget law, and subsidies under the European Union's Connecting Europe Facility, the Treasury document said.

Opposition lawmaker and Green party leader Angelo Bonelli on Friday called the project "insanity ... a political and media fraud", and asked the government to scrap it in view of the cost and lack of certainty over its funding.

Critics of the plan say it would be a waste of public money and question the wisdom of building a bridge in an active earthquake zone.

Supporters claim instead that it would breathe life into Italy's struggling economy and help to reduce the gap between its poorer south and wealthier north.

($1 = 0.9047 euros)

(Reporting by Federico Maccioni, editing by Gavin Jones and Jane Merriman)