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Today, upon the initiative of Aigars Kalvītis, Prime Minister of the Republic of Latvia, a meeting of the Prime Minister and Zhang Liming, Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China, Viktor Kaluzhny, Ambassador of the Russian Federation, and Zhalgas Adilbayev, authorized representative of the Republic of Kazakhstan in Latvia, took place in order to discuss the creation of a transit corridor from China through Kazakhstan and Russia to Latvia.
Aigars Kalvītis thanked the Ambassadors for readiness to cooperate and discuss mutual interests in developing transport routes in the East – West direction. The Head of Government stressed that China, Russia, Kazakhstan and Latvia in terms of growth rates are world leaders and that the freight flow from China to Europe increases, therefore it is necessary to think about a new transport corridor in the East – West direction.
The Prime Minister noted that these questions have already been discussed at a bilateral level and that transit would be beneficial to all involved parties, therefore active work should be started on this project by implementing common railway freight rates, improving of railway lines, logistics, and also political support has to be achieved for implementing this plan.
During the meeting, the Latvian representatives – Minister for Transport Krišjānis Peters, representatives of management of the ports of Rīga, Liepāja and Ventspils, the head of the company “Latvian Railway” and representatives of the Latvian Investment and Development Agency, gave a detailed presentation on Latvia’s transport infrastructure, freight transportation and transit capacity, logistics, outlined the new directions of development and emphasized the advantages of the East – West transit corridor in freight transportation: two times shorter delivery times and a significant reduction in costs.
All the invited Ambassadors thanked the Prime Minister for the initiative to organize a meeting of representatives of the countries involved in creating the transit corridor, and expressed support of their countries to this project. The Ambassadors noted the significance of this issue, readiness to continue with more specific cooperation, and expressed hope that there would be more meetings in order to get the project up and running.
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