Baltic States – CIS, Forum, Latvia, Legislation, Markets and Companies, Transport

Photo: president.lv

Andris Ozols, director at the Investment and Development Agency in Latvia, pointed out that the one and only business forum with Turkmenistan was held back in 2008, when Valdis Zatlers visited. "I must admit that there was only a slight push from the government and limited support for bilateral trade, that is why the statistics are quite small," said Ozols.

Latvian-Turkmenistan joint foreign trade volume in 2012 reached EUR 6.34 million, and as a trade partner of Latvia – last year Turkmenistan ranked #73. Ozols said that it is important to note that Latvia primarily exports services to Turkmenistan, not goods, and that import from Turkmenistan is miniscule.

According to the vice-president of Latvijas dzelzcels Edvins Berzins, the forum was informed of the introduction of a new section of the railway to the border with Iran and plans to build another site to Afghanistan. In the future, this makes possible to extend or change the routes of container trains coming from Latvia.