The next year, the Ministry of Infrastructure will prolong the implementation of large-scale infrastructure projects in cooperation with business. We are talking about the promising investment projects involving public-private partnership mechanisms, as well as further reform and digitalization of the entire industry.

Minister of Infrastructure Vladyslav Kryklii emphasized today, December 3, during the event "EBA Infrastructure Day 2020", organized by the European Business Association.

"I want to thank the business community for the fruitful collaboration in the difficult year of 2020. Despite the difficulties, we have managed to do a lot. With your active participation, we are launching a pilot project to allow private traction on the railway and continue to accept applications from the market. This summer we transferred to concession the first 2 seaports of Ukraine the Olvia and the Kherson with a total investment of about USD 134 million. And we continue to prepare the next concessions. We have started reforming the system of training and certification of seafarers. We are building a record number of roads, working on large-scale digital projects to control construction as well as the dimension and weight parameters. We have completed the procedures of Ukraine's technical integration into Eurocontrol, introduced a single ticket for different types of SmartTicket transport, and are working on building a security infrastructure. In 2021, we will continue to implement these and other large-scale projects. And I very much hope for further productive cooperation and business support in this," said Vladyslav Kryklii.

Among the key plans of the Ministry for the next year:

In the railway industry:

- concessions of railway terminals and stations Kharkiv-Pasazhyrsky, Dnipro-Holovny, Vinnytsia, Mykolayiv, Chop, Kyiv-Pasazhyrsky and Khmelnytsky;

- reforming the system of socially important passenger transportation;

- introduction of a system of ordering socially important passenger transportation by rail in suburban traffic.

 In the field of water transport:

- concessions of the railway-ferry complex and the container terminal of the port of Chornomorsk, the passenger complex in the port of Odessa, the Berdyansk seaport;

- preparation of port concessions in Izmail and Mariupol.

In aviation:

- development of regional airports;

- start of reconstruction of airports in Vinnytsia, Kherson and Rivne, the continuation of construction of the runway at Dnipropetrovsk airport.

To digitize transport infrastructure next year, the Ministry of Infrastructure plans to switch to paperless technologies for registration of goods at border crossings, as well as to introduce a single digital service for registration and maintenance of freight in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance, State Customs Service, State Border Service and other concerned authorities. In order to fulfill its obligations under the European Commission's European Green Deal initiative, the Ministry will continue to promote public electric transport in cities and develop multimodal transportation.

The participants of the event also discussed the state of fulfillment of Ukraine’s obligations under the Association Agreement with the EU and key tasks for next year. Thus, in 2021 the Ministry expects to sign the Agreement on Common Aviation Area with the EU, conclude an Agreement on the liberalization of international transit cargo transportation with the EU, accelerate the adaptation of legislation in the field of road transport, postal and courier services, approve key European integration bills, unlock the issue of including inland waterways to the TEN-T (Trans-European Network), and to finalize the process of revising and updating the Transport Annex in the Association Agreement.