“Every inhabitant of Latvia should have access to quality services provided by the state and local governments. Economically developed municipalities capable of providing their population with all the necessary public services, and a coordinated public transport network that ensures the mobility of the population are essential aspects for achieving this goal,” noted the President of Latvia after meeting with the Ministers.
The President of Latvia admitted that the improvement of the administrative and territorial system was the basis for achieving this target. However, one can gain results only if there is close cooperation between all the responsible ministries, in particular, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development, the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Transport.
During the meeting with the President of Latvia, while presenting the assignments and priorities in the supervised sector in 2019, Minister of Transport Tālis Linkaits highlighted the improvement of the legal framework for the taxi service sector and assessing the progress and preventing or reducing risks of large-scale investment projects of the European Union. Evaluation of the public transport service system and the improvement of the regulatory framework are also prioritised to reduce the state budget expenditures to cover losses of public transport service providers.
In her turn, Minister of Health Ilze Viņķele informed the President of Latvia that she prioritised the work on the establishment of a sustainable health care financing model, improvement of the quality of health care services, as well as introduction of transparent and unified management of capital companies during the meeting.
Minister of Environmental Protection and Regional Development Juris Pūce prioritised the completion of the administrative and territorial reform of local governments until 2021, progress towards a unified digital state governance by ensuring the implementation of useful ICT projects approved by the state governance and financed by the European Union funds, as well as the improvement of the operation of the State Environmental Service.
It has already been reported that President of Latvia Raimonds Vējonis planned to meet with all the ministers of the government led by Krišjānis Kariņš to hear the vision of the Ministers on the assignments to be fulfilled and priorities to be pursued in their supervised sectors in 2019 and later on.
