EU – Baltic States, Good for Business, Latvia, Technology, Telecomunications

Ventspils is located on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, the western part of Latvia. The city experienced rapid ICT sector development over the last 7 years. The number of ICT enterprises has increased more than 5 times. Predominantly, these are Latvian, Danish, Norwegian, and US capital companies. The main export markets of ICT products and services produced in Ventspils are Scandinavian countries, France, US and United Kingdom. Ventspils and the surrounding region take the second place in Latvia by the number of ICT personnel, thus only lagging behind Riga.

Within the strategy, it is planned to elaborate a plan how to continue development and reach even bigger concentration of ICT businesses in Ventspils.

The municipal institution Ventspils Digitalais centrs (VDC) will lead the strategy development while working teams will involve both consultants and more than 15 managers of local and foreign ICT enterprises. Director of VDC, Egons Spalans, points out that “the main reasons of the previous rapid growth of the sector were the supply of qualified specialists – graduates from Ventspils University College and VDC, the inflow of start-ups from the Business Incubator of Ventspils High Technology Park. The development was also driven by the private sector – foreign and Latvian capital ICT businesses.”

Connections to international internet backbones: 10Gbps channels from Ventspils to Riga and Stockholm

Source: Ventspils High Technology Park

Within the strategy, an operational plan will be elaborated, and it will foresee measures how to provide the ICT enterprises located in Ventspils with qualified labour force in the future. Also it is planned to exploit the opportunities of optical cable networks built in Latvia and Ventspils thus allowing Latvia to rank among the top 3 European countries by the average internet speed. An additional advantage of Ventspils is a number of independent high-capacity connections to international internet backbones.

 “The main objective of the strategy is to make Ventspils a centre of smart technology production and software development. We plan to make Ventspils more visible on the European Union ICT map, by finding a niche and specialisation suitable for the city and the region, as well as by providing high quality education, excellent infrastructure, and the best business environment for ICT enterprises,” explains Chairman of the Board of Ventspils High Technology Park, Ivars Eglajs.