Bulgaria and Turkey continue the measures to ease freight traffic and will work on a new railway border crossing point

Bulgaria and Turkey have taken additional measures to ease the heavy traffic through the border crossing points. These efforts would continue, but alternatives related to rail and water transport of goods and cargo would also be sought. The goal was to increase the number of operating intermodal trains from 7 to 22. This was stated by the Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Policies and Minister of Transport and Communications Hristo Alexiev after a meeting with the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure of the Republic of Turkey Adil Karaismailoglu.

Within 2-3 months, the construction of two new lanes for refrigerated trucks at Kapitan Andreevo checkpoint would be completed, which would also ease the passage, the Deputy Prime Minister said.

"After the Covid crisis and the recovery of the world economy, as well as steaming from of the war in Ukraine, all cargo and logistics flows were headed in the direction of our region. In this regard, my Turkish colleague and I agreed that we must work much more intensively to develop the alternatives related to rail and water transport", the Deputy Prime Minister commented. In his words, for the 10 months of 2022, more than 100,000 trucks were processed at the customs of Kapitan Andreevo and Lesovo, compared to the same period last year.

Both Ministers discussed the possibility of opening a new railway border crossing point between Bulgaria and Turkey along the line Yambol - Lesovo - Turkish border. "In the field of intermodal transportation, we have already made great progress – about 60-70,000 trucks from the terminal in Plovdiv have run to Turkey since the beginning of the year," said Hristo Alexiev.

The Turkish side several times thanked the representatives of the Bulgarian State for the efforts made and the visible results to ease the regime of crossing the border points in the last few months.