OREANDA-NEWS. February 07, 2014. Such an arrangement was reached by Minister of Road Infrastructure and Transport of Moldova Vasile Botnari and his Romanian counterpart Ramona Manescu at their meeting in Bucharest, which concluded with the signing of a memorandum on transport cooperation and strategic project implementation assistance.

According to Vasile Botnari, the set of top priority projects for all transportation areas was selected on the basis of proposals experts of the ministries had made. “What we need now is to go forward as fast as possible to implement the projects by all available means, including the funds provided by the EU”, the Minister stressed. Ramona Manescu confirmed the willingness to speed up the implementation so that the projects would be included in the EU financing plan as early as in the following year.

As she said, Romania has given its support to Moldova as for launches of projects on highway bridges construction and railways modernization. The ministers arranged to have the investment project and feasibility study for the highway bridge across the Prut at Ungheni completed by May 2014. When constructed, the bridge will connect the Tirgu Mures-Iasi- Ungheni highway with the Chisinau-Ungheni-Sculeni –Romanian border highway.

The parties are also planning to have the rail ways of Moldova modernized in the short and mid-term prospect. Vasile Botnari pointed out Moldova’s interest in being admitted to European funds to lay a narrow -gauge electric railway and to construct a multi-functional logistic centre in Chisinau.

To achieve these goals, a feasibility study is going to be carried out. Besides, the ministers arranged to have the Socola terminal at Iasi reequipped by this summer. Thanks to this the travel time for the trip from Ungheni to Iasi will be one hour shorter. The Ministers also discussed an opportunity of cooperation in joint projects on river navigation, including that on the Prut River and on harmonization of laws regulating the fields of transport and road construction.