OREANDA-NEWS. September 30, 2013. A delegation of Russian Railways headed by Company President Vladimir Yakunin has visited Chongqing Municipality in China at the invitation of the Municipality and held negotiations with Chongqing's Mayor, Huang Qifan. The talks took place on 18 September 2013 and were also attended by representatives of Chinese Railways, headed by Hu Yadun, Deputy Managing Director.

The purpose of the visit was to discuss issues connected with the development of the rail transit corridor linking Chongqing and Europe.

During the visit, a scheduled meeting also took place between Vladimir Yakunin and Sun Zhengcai, Secretary of the Municipality's Communist Party Committee under the Government of Chongqing.

In addition, during the visit a round table was held which was attended by representatives of Chongqing Municipality, Russian Railways, Chinese Railways and leading companies and shippers with production facilities in Chongqing's industrial cluster, including Hewlett Packard, BASF, Ford and a number of others. The attendees expressed their interest in increasing freight volumes dispatched in container trains from Chongqing to Europe via Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus and in the opposite direction.

Following the negotiations, the government of Chongqing and the corporations Chinese Railways and Russian Railways signed a cooperation memorandum in which the parties outlined steps to develop container transportation on the Chongqing - Europe route, including issues concerning tariff policy, border and customs clearance, delivery time optimisation and improving the quality of the "through" service.