OREANDA-NEWS. April 13, 2012. Ukraine and Romania are stepping up cooperation - after seven years of interruption, it has been resumed dialogue at the intergovernmental level between Romania and Ukraine on the development of transport, tourism and other sectors of economy.

The first meeting of Ukrainian-Romanian commission for economic, industrial, scientific and technical cooperation has held in Kyiv today on April 11. The Ukrainian part of the Commission has been headed by the First Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Kostyantyn Efymenko. The Chairman of the Romanian delegation – the State Secretary of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure of Romania Yeusebiu Pistru.

During the Commission meeting the parties, in particular, have agreed to cooperate in the transport sector. Ukraine and Romania have noted the prospects of cooperation within terms of the TRACECA, in particular, the development of freight traffic using the advantages of ferries. According to representatives of both countries, now development combined/multimodal transportations has considerable prospects, including their efficiency, reduce in delivery time and possibility of a choice of an optimum route of cargoes transportation.

They have been talking about accelerated transportation of cargoes toward the Baltic Sea - Black Sea, including by train of combined transport "Viking" and container train "Zubr."

"Regarding multimodal transportations, we passed Romanian party all the information about the situation in Ukraine. We are interested in attracting the maximum amount of container and piggyback transportations, using all the benefits of our extensive network of railways," said Kostyantyn Efymenko. He said that already in the summer with the Romanian party, also with the participation of Lithuania, Belarus and Turkey, it would be conducted meeting to strengthen relations in this area of traffic.

According to Kostyantyn Efimenko, Ukraine is underway active work on the development of multimodal transportations from the Asia-Pacific region to Western and Eastern Europe, transiting through the territory of our country.

The parties have agreed to hold the next Commission meeting in Bucharest in 2013.