Business, EU – Baltic States, Financial Services, Funds

Andris Ozols.

Ozols underlined that the principal task is not 100% appropriation of available funding, but rather ensuring that it is used in a way that brings maximum benefit to the nation, writes LETA.

Ozols believes that LIDA has managed to significantly reduce bureaucracy for appropriating EU funding in Latvia. However, he underlines, improvements still have to be made in the process of distribution of funding so that the number of unsuccessful applications for receiving it would be reduced.

According to Ozols, the focal challenge for Latvia now is to develop competitive entrepreneurial activity.

Asked to name specific development projects, the director of LIDA pointed out that the Coca Cola company still plans to build a plant in Latvia. As Ozols comments, the global economic crisis has had a dual impact on development of new projects in Latvia – on one hand, production expansion projects have virtually stopped, on the other hand, new projects have emerged, for example, some Scandinavian entrepreneurs are considering relocation of their production plants to Latvia for cost-saving purposes.