The document will allow advancing and bolstering future cooperation with a view to implementing concrete investment projects such as the pilot public private partnership project to reconstruct part of the M10 motorway, part of the P80 Sloboda-Papernya motorway, including the development of guidelines to improve motorway maintenance. The development of a portfolio of future projects in the area of road construction, which will be implemented using public private partnership, was also mentioned.

The memorandum also provides for coordinating actions to work out projects to repair (reconstruct) artificial road structures (bridges) in Belarus along the main motorways, which enable transit traffic and the bulk of domestic transportation by road. The reconstruction of the motorways M3 Minsk-Vitebsk and P46 Lepel-Polotsk-Russian border (Yukhnovichi) was also mentioned. Plans have been made to sign a credit agreement in 2019 to implement these two projects.

On the whole, the memorandum is supposed to secure foundation for cooperation between the EBRD and the Transport and Communications Ministry with a view to developing a stable transportation system and improving the quality of transport infrastructure in Belarus.

The ministry’s press service noted that the sides are mutually interested in developing the transport infrastructure and the relevant legislation in the Republic of Belarus. As part of the EBRD’s strategy for Belarus for 2016-2019 the bank intends to increase the stability and quality of services of state infrastructure by means of reforming the policy on regulating and assimilating commercial solutions, including in transport industry.

In turn, within the framework of the government program on developing the national transport complex in 2016-2020 and the government program on the development and maintenance of motorways in Belarus in 2017-2020 the government undertakes to implement a set of measures meant to ensure affordability, improve the quality and safety of transportation services, develop the transport infrastructure, improve quality parameters of public automobile roads.