Good for Business, Investments, Latvia

About EUR 107 mln have already been paid to contractors, including some EUR 20 mln this year.

LVC said that in 2014 it was the first to begin absorption of the EU financing in the new programming period. So far road construction projects financed by the Cohesion Fund and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) have been approved and are being implemented in Latvia.

When the Latvian national budget for 2016 was approved, EUR 24 mln were earmarked for improvement of main public roads with the Cohesion Fund financing but no allocations were planned for repairs of regional roads because the Cabinet of Ministers regulations for selection of projects had not yet been approved.

Waiting for approval of the required regulations, LVC was working also on projects for regional roads so that they could be submitted to the Finance Ministry for approval immediately after the adoption of the relevant Cabinet of Ministers regulations.

The regulations were adopted on February 9 this year, and by now 15 projects totaling EUR 128.7 mln have been approved for construction works on the regional roads. Some of those projects are quite big therefore their implementation will continue next year, and part of the financing will also be spent in 2017.

In 2015, EUR 24.3 mln were used in implementation of the projects financed by the ERDF, and EUR 8 mln have been spent so far this year. LVC still expects to absorb up to EUR 50 mln before the end of this year.