Business news

20 Feb 2020

Belarus, Latvia, Sweden mull over multimodal cargo transportation services

An archive photo

MINSK, 20 February (BelTA) – Belarus, Latvia and Sweden are working on the development of multi-modal cargo transportation services, BelTA learned from the press service of the Belarusian Transport and Communications Ministry.

Belarus’ Deputy Transport and Communications Minister Andrei Ivanov met with State Secretary of the Ministry for Infrastructure of Sweden Mattias Landgren and Deputy State Secretary of the Ministry of Communications of Latvia Uldis Reimanis on the sidelines of the 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety: Achieving Global Goals 2030 in Stockholm. The parties expressed readiness to work out points of cooperation and ensure the implementation of projects to develop new areas of cooperation.

According to Uldis Reimanis, sustainable economic relations between Belarus, Latvia and Sweden are a good basis for strategic partnership between the three countries in securing an integrated multimodal logistics chain to promote new cargo flows between Europe and Asia. In his words, all necessary conditions are already in place for this cooperation. For example, there is maritime traffic between the ports of Sweden and Latvia and their internal transport networks in Latvia and Belarus. A large-scale project of the Chinese-Belarusian industrial park Great Stone is under development. According to Uldis Reimanis, it is possible to organize effective multimodal transport routes from the park to the Scandinavian countries, primarily to Sweden.

According to the Transport and Communications Ministry, the conference in Stockholm was especially important for establishing and strengthening ties between Belarus and countries of near and far abroad in the transport industry, study international best practices in the transport system development. The Belarusian delegation also met with representatives of the World Bank on the sidelines of the conference.

The conference marked the end of the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011–2020. During the conference the high-level group discussed the progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals through a zero-mortality ideology, creating effective guidance for road safety, financing of safe and sustainable transport systems, strengthening of international cooperation, and the prospects for 2030. The conference adopted the declaration.