The Annual General Meeting of the Rail Baltic Business Network (RBBN) approved the management board’s activity report for the 2015/2016 financial year as well as the 2017 annual budget and action plan.
The members of the network were also provided with summary of an analysis „Influence of Rail Baltic to Estonia’s state budget in the construction phase“ by Senior Analytst Janno Järve from CentAR Center for Applied Research.and a short presentation of AS Merko Ehitus who was hosting the meeting at their premises in Tallinn.
„The CentAR’s report was very interesting as it showed that the investments into the construction of Rail Baltic will have an immediate and significant positive impact on the Estonian economy. The experts believe that due to construction-related large-scale VAT returns to the state budget, the proportion of financing for Estonia is significantly less than indicated by the initial estimates“, noted Tõnis Tamme, member of the board of RBBN.
During the first economic year the membership of RBBN has risen to 19 companies. The network has held regular quarterly meetings with high-level guest speakers providing the members with important new information regarding the plans and objectives of the Rail Baltic project. In addition, an international conference „Business Case: Rail Baltic“ was organised by the network in Tallinn with ca 150 people attending. The network has set up a webpage in both Estonian and English languages, initiatied contacts with businesses from Finland, Latvia and Lihtuania interested in RB and repeatedly participated in the public debate regarding the new railway both in written and in electronic press.
Rail Baltic Business Network was established in 2015 to provide entrepreneurs an opportunity contribute to matters related to Rail Baltic and to analyse and promote the business potential of the new railway.
