Caspian Energy (CE): How do you evaluate development of the transport infrastructure of Latvia?  To what degree is it integrated into the All-European space? 

Anrijs Matīss, Minister of Transport of the Republic of Latvia: Transport is the backbone of a well-functioning and competitive economy and a key for ensuring sustainable mobility of people and goods both regionally and internationally. Companies involved in transport industry and governments regularly face different complex challenges while pursuing to do their business more efficiently and make it more rentable. These challenges include the existence of physical and administrative barriers, such as transportation bottlenecks, insufficient or inadequate transport infrastructures, and as well as lack of funds. Solving these problems is not an easy assignment.

Latvia’s competitiveness stems predominantly from two factors – our people and our geopolitical location. The synergy of these factors has created a truly world-class transit industry in Latvia, contributing around 10% of the GDP and employing about 9% of the workforce. And we see continuous growth opportunities as for example last year the amount of cargo operations in Latvian ports reached it’s record of 75.2 mil tons.

Transport and logistics play a vital role in the Baltic Sea Region economy overall. In order to help boosting Latvia’s competitiveness and provide an adequate environment for the transit and logistics sector, there is a need for a coherent and modern transport system and developed transport networks and infrastructure. Therefore joint efforts and enhanced cooperation is essential between government and non-government institutions also on international level, developing easy accessible and modern rail, road, maritime and air connections, both internal and external.

Latvia's geographical location between the East and the West, forming the EU's external border with Russia and Belarus, is particularly significant for the Russian market and Central Asia region, but also important for EU because of the potential transit function of Far East cargo.

Historically Latvia has inherited an outstanding transit infrastructure – three large ice-free ports and a well-developed railway network fully interconnected with Russian railways suitable for high-capacity cargo transfers.

International Airport “Riga” is a key player amongst airports in the Baltics, reaching 5 mil. passengers in 2011. It provides regular connections to 81destinations in Europe and the CIS countries. 

Rail Baltica is essential for connecting Baltics and Central Europe by rail, therefore improving of region’s accessibility for passengers and cargo. Developed and upgraded rail network is crucial in the context of sustainability of the region thus ensuring regular cross-border passenger and cargo flows to the North-South direction, increasing tourism, trade and “people-to-people” contacts. 

Business expansion and social travelling within the region and internationally nowadays require more diverse transport channels and multi-modal transport networking.