EU – Baltic States, Financial Services, Funds, Latvia, Markets and Companies, Transport

The figure could further increase to EUR 300 million in 2016.

Boriss Knigins, deputy head of the Finance Ministry's EU Funds Strategy Department, tells LETA that EUR 13.5 million from EU structural funds for the 2014-2020 period was absorbed by Latvia in 2014, of which EUR 9 million went to road reconstruction, almost EUR 5 million to youth employment, and EUR 200,000 to the development of health networks.

This year, according to preliminary estimates, over EUR 100 million available from EU funds will be absorbed in Latvia, and the amount will further increase in the coming years. "The government and the prime minister have said that the pace at which EU funds are absorbed needs to be accelerated. The economy is cooling off, therefore EU funding and investment in entrepreneurship and also infrastructure would do a lot of good," the Finance Ministry's EU Funds Monitoring Department's Director Diana Rancane told LETA.

For instance, in the transport sector projects that account for almost half of the entire funding available for the sector in the 2014-2020 period commenced in 2014 and 2015. EU funds will be distributed until 2023, but agreements are signed and projects get under way already during the first years of the period, explained Rancane.

According to Knigins, one of the most prominent such projects in Riga is reconstruction of the Salu (Island) Bridge. The project is supervised by the Transport Ministry. The ministry's railroad electrification project will also be a major undertaking.

There has also been notable progress this year with implementation of projects that deal with reconstruction of regional roads, social inclusion projects of the Welfare Ministry, and various activities of the Education and Science Ministry.

The total amount of EU structural and cohesion funds available to Latvia in the 2014-2020 period is EUR 4.4 billion under the "Growth and Employment" program.

The Finance Ministry's representatives explain that the European Commission pays more attention to efficient and sustainable investments, which means that development of strategic documents and harmonization of projects takes more time than before. In order to streamline distribution of EU funds, the system of administration of EU funds has been simplified and now there is one institution responsible for administration of EU funds in Latvia – the Central Finance and Contracting Agency.