Analytics, EU – Baltic States, Financial Services, Latvia, Markets and Companies, Rating

The 2018 Scoreboard covers 43 countries, providing information on debt, equity, asset-based finance, and conditions for SME and entrepreneurship finance, complemented by an overview of recent policy measures to support access to finance.

Assessing the SME situation in Latvia, the OECD found that, in general, Latvian companies have good access to financing for growth. The number of bankruptcies among SMEs has decreased, loan interest rates keep moving down, and the share of non-performing loans is shrinking while new business lending to SMEs is growing. Although total bank loans remain well below the pre-crisis level, venture and growth capital increased year-on-year for the third year in a row in 2016, more than doubling since 2014.

Source: oecd.org 

Latvian Economics Minister Arvils Aseradens (Unity) told LETA that the main conclusions from the OECD Scoreboard confirmed that the ministry's efforts to improve business environment and to support SMEs, in particular startups, was the right way to stimulate economic growth, value added and innovations.

The OECD said in its report that SMEs were increasingly turning to alternative sources of financing, while new bank lending is declining in a number of countries. Many SMEs remain over-reliant on bank credit, however, and the take-up of instruments other than straight debt varies greatly from one country to another.