Conference in Kosice Shows Rail Transport Opportunities for New Silk Road

Kosice, April 27 (TASR) – A total of 140 experts who attended a conference in Kosice this week on the One Belt One Road Initiative, also dubbed the New Silk Road, concurred on the need to develop closer cooperation in logistics and to establish more effective transport links, especially by rail, TASR learnt on Friday.

A key goal of the conference, organised by the Slovak Transport and Construction Ministry and the International Coordination and Service Centre for Land Bridge Block-Train Programmes from Beijing, was to present opportunities provided by Slovakia in terms of transit, including the planned project of constructing a logistics centre for rail transport between Asia and Europe in eastern Slovakia, said Kosice regional authority spokesperson Anna Cincarova.

On Friday, conference attendees went to see the rail transhipment points in Cierna nad Tisou and Dobra (Kosice region), which serve for transloading between European-width rails and broad-gauge rails. The Dobra terminal currently has the annual transloading capacity for 200,000 containers and could become a major logistics centre in eastern Europe.

“I’m happy that we concurred on several issues with the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China in Slovakia [Lin Lin] and the Chinese investors. I’m also pleased that the Chinese side has agreed to cooperate on the GLIP [Global Logistics Industrial Park] project. We’ll work on further joint steps in order to boost the status of Kosice region and Slovakia as a transit country,” said Kosice regional governor Rastislav Trnka, stressing that Kosice region offers enough rail transport capacities between Asia and Europe, including a higher rail transport speed than Poland and Hungary.