Representatives of OSJD took a photo with the host Vietnam. (Photo: CPV)
In 2017, OSJD mainly focused on completing and developing international railway passenger and freight transport, improving the competitive capacity of passenger and cargo transport in Europe-Asia, and enhancing legal framework to achieve the best efficiency in railway transport and meet the demand of its members.
In his speech in front of nearly 120 delegates from 20 units of the OSJD country members, 7 joint ventures and 2 international organizations, Deputy Transport Minister Nguyen Ngoc Dong said that together with institution reform and human resources development, Vietnam considers infrastructure development as a strategic breakthrough.
The Government and the Ministry of Transport have issued a number of policies to create a liberal legal corridor, especially the mechanism to attract both domestic and foreign investment, in an effort to mobilise resources from all economic components for infrastructure development.
In addition, the railway sector actively restructured and renewed management, business and production, sped up investment, construction and connection with international network such as China, Laos, Cambodia and ASEAN in order to improve the competitive capacity, attract more customers and expand transport market share.
The ministry will submit the policy of building North-South high-speed railway and studying construction of Hai Phong-Hanoi-Lao Cai railway route to the Government for consideration and to the National Assembly for approval.
In addition, the agency continues to assist the railway sector to realize the set targets under railway transport strategies by 2020, with a vision to 2015; significantly contributing to the overall development of the OSJD network.
As a dynamic developing country in Asia-Pacific, Vietnam has actively participated into and carried out many trade agreements with other countries, especially the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and is preparing to sign a free trade agreement between Vietnam and the EU.
After many discussions, the event adopted 16 resolutions on April 19th to ensure the organisation's operations over 2018-2019, focusing on various fields, such as freight and passenger traffic, infrastructure, mutual accounting, and the mechanism for debt repayments.
On the sidelines, Vietnam Railways Corporation held bilateral meetings with other rail units on exchanges of cooperation opportunities to develop logistics by rail between Vietnam and OSJD member countries, as well as discussing running container liners from Vietnam through the organization to Europe.
The OSJD was established on June 28th, 1956 at an international ministerial meeting in Bulgaria. With an initial length of about 227,000 kilometers, so far the organization has a total rail length of more than 281,000 km, with about four billion passengers and six billion tonnes of freight carried every year./.