On 6 November 2018, upon official invitation of Mr. Ciopraga, TRACECA Secretary General, Mr. Justin Berg, Economic Section Chief and Mr. Yusif Abasov, Economic Adviser of the U.S. Embassy in Baku visited the TRACECA Headquarter

At the meeting Mr. Ciopraga, Mr. Berg and Mr. Abasov had exchange of opinions on the trade and transport opportunities in the Europe-the Caucasus-Asia region, particularly of TRACECA member-states as well as the issues of cargo transportation along the corridor.

Within the exchange of opinions with Mr. Berg and Mr. Abasov, Mr. Ciopraga mentioned the importance of attraction of the international financial institutions to TRACECA activities for the implementation of new projects. Mr. Ciopraga informed on the Third TRACECA Investment Forum which will be organized within the framework of the Black Sea Forum on 14-15 May 2019 at Constanta, Romania during the Romanian Presidency in the Council of the European Union.

Special attention during the meeting was focused on the latest activities within the cooperation initiatives of TRACECA and related regional programme. In particular, Mr. Ciopraga mentioned that on 10 September 2018, in Baku, Azerbaijan, the Memorandum of Understanding between the PS IGC TRACECA and CAREC was signed. 6 out of the 13 member countries (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) of TRACECA are also CAREC members. At the moment the CAREC Program comprises - partnership of 11 countries (Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, People's Republic of China (the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region), Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) and development partners working together to promote enlargement through cooperation, leading to accelerated economic growth and poverty reduction.  

Mr. Ciopraga also mentioned that TRACECA is preparing a subject guide “TRACECA Guide for Border Crossing”, that will be placed on our web-site, and we hope that this Guide will be helpful both to carriers, and authorities of the countries, who will visually see possible ways for elimination of the bottlenecks. The goal of this Guide consists in allowing users to gain knowledge regarding the instruments making it possible to realize more effective measures on borders’ management – both in the context of increasing the effectiveness and with the view of facilitating trade, as the need to provide proper management at border crossing points is our urgent task. 

At the same time, Mr. Berg, Mr. Abasov and Mr. Ciopraga discussed the status of cooperation between TRACECA and United Nations Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN OHRLLS), located in New York.

The participants of the meeting also discussed on future visions and plans in the region, further implementation of the Agreement of multimodal transport TRACECA and possibilities on the financing of new investments and infrastructure projects in TRACECA member-states.