Tatyana Gracheva

A meeting between Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Spinu, Minister of Infrastructure and Regional Development and several freight operators was held yesterday. The flow of traffic at border crossings, the liberalization of road freight transport with the European Union and the price of road transport permits was discussed during this event.
The institution claims that in order to reduce the waiting time for freight trucks at border crossing points, rapid measures to streamline traffic and unblock the situation at customs were taken by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Regional Development (MIDR) together with the relevant authorities.
According to MIDR, they have set up a joint group to coordinate the actions of the Moldovan and Romanian authorities at border crossing points in order to reduce waiting times for lorries; the Leușeni-Albița border crossing point is the first customs point of the Moldovan-Romanian joint team; the Romanian side operationalizes the customs control with the help of several electronic document processing devices; they organize the flows of goods according to the load. For example, empty trucks may cross in transit through low-capacity crossing points.
They have also increased the number of customs workers to raise the processing rate and the customs activity’s efficiency; they synchronized the work schedule between the control teams from the Republic of Moldova and Romania and made the phytosanitary and sanitary-veterinary authorities in Romania operate on a 24/7 basis; special services check and present the status of the functionality of scanners, scales and other truck scanning and checking technologies at each border crossing point.
The minister mentioned a decrease of the price of road transport permits to 5 euros. CEMT authorizations will cost 150 euros for an annual authorization and 40 euros for a monthly authorization.
The participants also discussed the liberalization of bilateral freight and transit services between EU member states and the Republic of Moldova during the meeting. According to Andrei Spinu, an Agreement between Moldova and the EU MIDR is being negotiated about. It will enter into force provisionally from the time it is signed, possibly at the end of June.

Source Link

According to Genadi Arveladze, the Deputy Economy Minister of Georgia, the free trade agreement between Georgia and Turkey will be amended by the two states to make it easier for businesses to sell their services to the two markets. This decision was made following his meeting with Mustafa Tuzcu, the Deputy Minister of Trade of Turkey.
The dialogue between the two officials took place on the sidelines of the World Trade Organisation’s 12th Ministerial Conference. As it was announced by Georgia’s Economy Ministry on Tuesday, they agreed on talks to add trade in services to the deal “in the near future”.
According to Arveladze, Turkey is Georgia’s “largest trading partner”. He also added that the amendment to the agreement would increase bilateral trade turnover and would be “equally beneficial” for both countries.
The “difficult geopolitical situation” in the Black Sea region on the backdrop of the conflict in Ukraine, and opportunities for further intensification of bilateral trade and economic relations were also discussed by Georgian and Turkish officials.
They also noted during the meeting that Turkey is ranking first among Georgia’s largest trading partners (15 percent share, along with a 28 percent growth in bilateral trade turnover and a 23 percent increase of Georgia’s exports in the first quarter of 2022).
According to the ministry, Georgia officially joined the initiative to regulate trade in services by countries with advanced economies in the framework of the Ministerial, and they set Arveladze to hold bilateral meetings with the heads of trade delegations of various countries.
The functioning of the multilateral trading system was reviewed at the Conference that took place in Geneva, Switzerland, between June 12-15 and gathered ministers from across the world.

Source Link