Today, President of Latvia Egils Levits met with the Minister for Economy Jānis Vitenbergs in the Riga Castle to discuss the National Recovery and Resilience Plan investments, challenges created by the tax reform and national economic research programme.
President of Latvia asked the Economy Minister about ministry’s plans and activities after receiving European Recovery and Resiliency Facility funding. According to Minister Vitenbergs, the main priority will be development of affordable housing. There is a huge demand for such housing in Latvia, and thus ministry plans to build around 700 units across various regions of Latvia. President of Latvia welcomed the effort and wished Minister success in achieving the goal.
On the housing, both officials also discussed ALTUM family guarantee programme. Egils Levits underlined the significance of this programme for young families and young professionals. He expressed firm support for allocating national budget funding and continuation of this ALTUM programme in future.
President Levits and Minister Vitenbergs talked about the results of the Latvian Investment and Development Agency (LIDA) in the first six months of this year. Both officials praised LIDA for bringing 17 new investment projects to Latvia, with total investments reaching 313 million euro and 1,615 new jobs created. There are four fast-track projects among them, i.e., projects in priority areas with high added value. Five Belarusian companies have completely or partly moved their operations to Latvia this year. This year’s new investment projects cover areas like mechanical engineering, renewables, aquacultures, electronics, smart materials, engineering and design, real estate and other fields.
President and Economy Minister then discussed the tax reform which came to force on 1 July. Egils Levits underlined that although we need the reform, some of its elements are ambiguous, which has had a huge impact on most self-employed, artists and authors and part-time workers. Reform needs adjustments to better reflect the real income on the individual level and ensure fair social contributions.
Egils Levits and Jānis Vitenbergs also exchanged views on research programme for long-term vision of Latvia. President stressed the need to reinforce and facilitate the programme, which can produce research on how to develop knowledge-intensive bioeconomy, biomedicine and biotechnologies, smart energy, smart materials, engineering networks and information and communication technologies for the new age.