Construction, Financial Services, Latvia, Legislation, Transport

As those roads are practically unused, their maintenance intensity will be downgraded because the state cannot afford to maintain roads "for the sake of few mushroom pickers", the minister said.

At the same time, the maintenance intensity level has been increased in respect of about 200 kilometers of roads that are used intensively, Augulis said.

He agreed that roads in Latvia were in poor condition and said that the deficit of financing for road repairs was around EUR 4 billion or a half of the annual nation budget. However, Latvia had many different needs and could not allocate to roads the full amount needed. Nevertheless, additional EUR 25 million have been granted for road repairs next year and will mostly be spent on regional roads which so far had been neglected. Extra allocations for roads are planned also in the coming years.

Later on Thursday the transport minister will chair the meeting of the Road Council. During this meeting, the results of the Latvian road inventor survey will be presented for the first time.