Analytics, Economics, Financial Services, Lithuania, Society

According to a poll commissioned by ELTA news agency and carried out on 11-21 October by pollster Baltijos Tyrimai, 14% of respondents believe that the economic situation in Lithuania has improved over the last two months, 43% said that it has not changed, while four out of ten respondents said that it has deteriorated.

In a month, residents' opinion of Lithuania's economic situation has improved slightly as there are by 5% more of those who have noticed growth. However, the share of those who are pessimistic about their country's economy has increased by 7%.

Swedbank's Maciulis explains that although Lithuania's economy has been consistently improving for more than a year, the opinion of residents was corrected by negative forecasts.

"I believe that deterioration of the public opinion was partly influenced by the fact that economists and various institutions have cut the growth forecasts for 2014 and 2015 because of tensions in economic relations of Russia and Western countries and mutual embargo. These developments were somewhat unexpected which resulted in growing pessimism," the economist said.

When it comes to the macroeconomic data, one could not say that this year's economic situation in Lithuania is worse than that of 2013, the economist stressed. According to Maciulis, there have been many positive trends.

However, the economist noted that a large percentage of population personally did not notice any improvement. The poll results only support his statement: in October, only 10% of those polled named their family's financial status as improving. A third of Lithuanians (34%) said that the financial situation of their family has worsened, while more than half of them (55%) did not see any changes.