Analytics, EU – Baltic States, Latvia, Legislation, Markets and Companies, Rating

The goal of the business environment improvement strategy for 2013 and 2014 was to encourage simple, quality services via more electronic services, but the new strategy has no such main goal.

The Economy Ministry presented the strategy to the government yesterday. The goals of the strategy include creation of attractive business environment based on systematic and well thought-out reforms, transparent legislative process, simplicity, and such laws and regulations that would not hamper companies' operations.

The Economy Ministry notes that one of the most popular tools to measure a country's business environment is the "Doing Business" study. In 2014, Latvia was ranked 24th out of 189 countries participating in the study, and in 9th place in the European Union.

In this year's study, Latvia is in the same place as in 2013 when 185 countries were surveyed. Estonia is ranked 22nd – down one position from last year, whereas Lithuania is in 17th place, eight places up from last year.

"In order to overtake our competitors in the region and to position Latvia as a business and investment-friendly economy, decisions fostering the national economy in the long term must be taken," notes the Economy Ministry.