Education and Science, Good for Business, Labour-market, Latvia, Technology

"As compared to 2011, the total amount of turnover in 2012 grew by 21%; last year, the figure was around 20%, according to Firmas.lv data. We have to take into account that the amount of export increased as well. In 2013, export grew by 20% from 2012, while in the first quarter of 2013, export grew by 17% as compared to the first quarter of 2012," Melnudris said.

He also said that currently, the IT field is facing a shortage of specialists.

"In order to improve the situation in the long term, we have begun cooperating with the Ministry of Education and Science and the National Center for Education, with an aim to emphasize the importance of teaching mathematics, information technology and other hard sciences in schools. Schoolchildren need to develop logical thinking so that later in high school they would be able to study the basics of programming. Otherwise the current number of students who drop out of universities in their first semester, 30% at the moment, will not change. This is because young people are not aware of the specifics of the IT sector or are not competent enough for studying in this field," Mlenudris said.

He also indicated that the demand for IT specialists is still growing in Latvia.