Daiva Rimašauskaitė of the ministry told BNS the note was sent to Kazakhstan's Ministry of Transport and Communications on 26 July in response to reports by Lithuanian national road carriers' association Linava about problems in Kazakhstan.
In the note, Lithuania proposes "holding a joint meeting of the Lithuanian-Kazakh commission in the short run and discuss and coordinate the use of permits for cargo transportation in compliance with the inter-state agreement, signed in 1993," the diplomat said.
Linava President Algimantas Kondrusevičius told BNS that problems were related to third-country permits as Kazakhstan's institutions demand permits taking into account not the location where the cargo was loaded but the seller or the producer's country of origin.
"Carriers are asked to provide permits not from the country where the cargo was loaded, but from the country of the seller or producer. Let's say if the goods are Chinese and were loaded at Klaipėda port, we cannot carry them," Kondrusevičius told BNS.
He said Lithuania would try to reach agreement with Kazakhstan on demanding permits from the country where goods were loaded.
The Linava president said problems in Kazakhstan started some three months ago as following the establishment of the Customs Union between Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia, some rules were taken over from Russia.
He said that Lithuanian carriers are forced to reload cargo to trucks of carriers from other countries having necessary permits at Kazakhstan's border. "It undermines competitiveness of Lithuanian carriers, and if the situation continues, foreign companies will stop hiring Lithuanians for certain shipments," Kondrusevičius said.
He said carriers incur huge losses but did not provide any figures.
