Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 20
By Sara Israfilbayova – Trend:
Lithuania could be a gateway to the EU for Azerbaijan producers, Lithuanian Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Darius Skusevičius said in an interview with Trend and Azernews.
“Lithuania offers attractive conditions for investing in free trade zones, engineering, industrial equipment, automotive, electronics, biotech, clean-tech, ICT, R&D, transportation sectors,” he said.
“The information technology, transport and logistics, furniture, electronic equipment, medicine and food industries could be the most potential to expand bilateral cooperation,” Skusevičius said.
“Ranked 4th in the world for fulfilling business needs for ICT, Lithuanian companies can offer innovative IT solutions for Azerbaijan institutions and private companies,” he said.
“Lithuania takes a leading place in the EU for implementation of e-government services,” Skusevičius said. “We can efficiently contribute implementing cyber security solutions in Azerbaijan.”
“Lithuania is becoming the European hub for blockchain technologies and fintech industries, so we offer Azerbaijani business to utilize our favorable legislative and business environment in the EU,” he added.
“Azerbaijan is one of our main trading partners in South Caucasus,” Skusevičius said. “The best way to foster our economic and trade cooperation is by exchanging our business delegations and encouraging direct B2B contacts.”
“Lithuania has established a well-functioning multimodal transport and logistics system and plays an important transit country role in the East-West and North-South transportation corridors,” he said. “Therefore, our country can offer Azerbaijan a safe, fast and inexpensive transportation of Azerbaijani cargo to Europe and the Scandinavian countries.”
“We also see cooperation possibilities in the Europe-China cargo transportation chain through the Eurasian transport multimodal corridor of TRACECA as well,” Skusevičius added.
According to the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee, trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Lithuania amounted to $19.12 million in January-October 2018. The trade turnover between the countries increased by 39 percent compared to the same period of 2017.