This year, the Rail Baltica project has been essentially secured for $1.5 billion. Euro financing — sekunde.lt

• One second
• chase
• 2024.07.10 13:10

This year, the national strategic goal of the European high-speed rail “Baltic Rail” project was basically implemented with 1.5 billion in funding. Deputy Minister of Transport Loreta Maskaliovienė said that the financing value is equivalent to euros.

The latest funding amount for the Rail Baltic installation in 2024 was determined after updating the cost-benefit analysis of the project. It was conducted by the consulting firm “Boston Consulting Group”.
“Before the project was fully completed, we had a more or less clear amount of investment. Of course, it has grown. (…) To date, the population of all countries is close to 3 billion. For euro financing of the project, Lithuania has allocated 1 billion euros for all of Lithuania. (…) I hope that next week a resolution will be adopted to finance the European project with almost 500 million. Let’s assume that this year we have raised 1.5 billion. L. Maskaliovienė said on Wednesday during a presentation to the Audit Committee of the Parliament on the progress of the project implementation.
The deputy minister said that the priority for the two-year period remains to involve the finance ministers of EU countries responsible for budgetary decisions in discussions on further financing of Rail Baltica. L. Maskaliovienė said that the involvement of these ministers would help maintain the growing funding of the Connectivity Europe Facility (CEF) and the Military Mobility Programme, part of which is also allocated to the Rail Baltica project.
Another 200 million euros were planned for the Rail Baltic project this year from the Lithuanian budget allocation. The deputy minister said these funds were “more than enough” but had not yet been fully used.
“All attention is now focused on speeding up the work, discussions are ongoing with the railways and RB Rail, what else can we do to speed up the work. (…) At the moment, I don’t see any progress, that’s why the focus and discussions with the contractors are on how to manage the risks and speed up the work,” explains L. Maskaliovienė.
According to the deputy minister, an agreement was also signed with the Polish Ministry of Transport, allowing the connection between Kaunas and Poland to be completed in 2028.
“We were planning to start construction from Kaunas to Poland. Now we have changed the script and will start construction from Poland. Poland has no reason to doubt that we will achieve interconnection in 2028 because we are starting construction from the other side of the Polish border”, L. Maskaliovienė noted.
As the Deputy Minister said in June, the plans for the installation of the Rail Baltic section between Vilnius and Kaunas remain unchanged, and it has been confirmed that the direct connection of Vilnius and Kaunas airports with a common terminal on the European railway tracks will be completed on time – by 2030.
As Marius Narmontas, Operations Director of Rail Baltic contractor RB Rail, stressed, a new cost-benefit analysis of the project shows that the project is economically viable. It is calculated that the economic benefits of the project amount to 6.6 billion euros, and the gross domestic product (GDP) should be between 1.55 and 23.5 billion euros.
“Why a new cost-benefit analysis – (…) Geopolitical events happened, the war in Ukraine, COVID-19, inflation. We wanted to see (…) if the project is feasible and useful. From the analysis it can be seen – 6.6 billion. Overall economic impact. The analysis shows that the project is feasible and useful”, said M. Narmontas.
RailBaltic is the largest railway infrastructure project in the history of the Baltic States. During its implementation, an electrified European gauge double-track railway line will be built along the entire RailBaltic railway line, extending from Warsaw to Kaunas and Riga to Tallinn. The total length of RailBaltic railway lines in the Baltic States reaches 870 kilometers: Lithuania – 392 kilometers, Latvia – 265 kilometers, Estonia – 213 kilometers.

Distribution, publication, or reproduction of ALTA information and photo information is prohibited without ALTA’s written consent.