Business news

The agreement on the transfer of cargoes, freight and passenger cars, containers between the Belarusian Railways and LDZ CARGO (a branch enterprise of the Latvian Railways).

The parties discussed the current issues of bilateral cooperation: freight and passenger transportation and prospects of their development in H2 2016. The parties considered draft agreements on cooperation in the organization of train services and the state of railway infrastructure, the order of transferring cargoes, freight and passenger cars and containers.

The meeting also discussed joint work in transport and logistics, tariff and marketing sectors. The parties took note of the appropriateness to continue cooperation in order to attract additional cargo flows, including ZUBR hauls, and also the organization of cargo transportation from Latvian seaports with the use of the refrigerating rolling stock of the Belarusian Railways.

Representatives of the two railway administrations discussed the measures taken to monitor the technical and commercial condition of the railcars in the interstate division points and the measure to introduce e-invoices in bilateral international freight transport.

Today, the freight service between Belarus and Latvia accounts for 24% of all international traffic of Belarusian Railways. In 2015 the volume of freight transportation between Belarus and Latvia via Bigosovo-Indra made up 30.5 million tonnes (up 2% over 2014). Export shipments of goods from Belarus to Latvia and its seaports increased by 59.9%.

Particular attention was paid to the passenger transportation between Minsk and Riga and the measures to make the rail service more attractive as compared to other transport modes. Work to promote passenger travel between the capitals of Belarus and Latvia will continue.