Today, President of Latvia Egils Levits, who is currently on an official visit in Sweden, opened the Latvian-Swedish online business forum in Stockholm. He wished participants fruitful and productive forum in practical terms and emphasised the enormous importance of bilateral trade cooperation from the Nordic-Baltic regional cooperation and European Union development perspective.
According to President Levits, the trade turnover between Sweden and Latvia reached 1.9 billion euro in 2020. Swedish companies also made significant investments into Latvian economy, in particular sectors such as finances, forestry and telecommunications, with biggest investors including the likes of IKEA, Volvo, Telia, Swedbank, SEB – brands that are well-known in Latvia.
President of Latvia focused on sustainability, which is absolutely key right now as the pandemic has shown: ‘European Green Deal establishes new rules, laws and regulations that we, all Europeans, will have to follow to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. We must build synergies between sustainability and business objectives to make this radical shift to climate neutrality, and governments will have to work closely together with private sector to create these nodes’.
Egils Levits also drew attention to current economic trends like localisation of supply chains: ‘This means more products based on responsible and sustainable manufacturing, efficient transportation networks, environmentally friendly parts and ingredients, and other similar systems. This is a perfect opportunity for Latvia and Sweden to intensify cooperation building on current global trends.’
President Levits stressed that Latvia can offer Sweden solid partnership in many areas, especially mechanical engineering, pharmaceuticals, ICT and wood processing, which have benefitted from major skills development programmes in recent decades.
President of Latvia highlighted that Rail Baltica railway infrastructure project is a joint project heavily supported by all three Baltic partners: ‘It symbolises greater market compatibility. It is a good opportunity for businesses to get involved in building a new economic corridor, which will soon connect countries from Berlin to Tallin, and maybe even Helsinki. Although complex and extremely innovative, this is a project which aims to build stable flow of people, goods and services between Baltic countries and beyond. I highly recommend Swedish companies to learn more about how their sector can benefit from this infrastructure project’.
On the economic recovery after the pandemic, Egils Levits said to Swedish entrepreneurs that Latvian government currently prioritises innovation-driven growth in sectors like biomedicine, smart cities and smart materials: ‘Thriving start-up ecosystem is key; according to Index Ventures, a well-known US-based venture capital firm, the most start-up friendly country in in the world, Latvia, now has one. We split first place with our neighbours – Estonia and Lithuania’.
President also spoke about joint Nordic-Baltic cross-border digital area: ‘This specifically ties into Ministerial Declaration Digital North 2.0. Declaration of the Nordic Council of Ministers builds on the vision of Nordic-Baltic region becoming the most sustainable and integrated region in the world thanks to advanced digital technologies and use of data in a transparent, fair, secure, and democratic manner’.