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State of the Environment in Riga 2001
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  City economy
 
BUSINESS AND FINANCES 


 FOREIGN INVESTMENT


The amount of foreign investment has substantially increased over the last seven years in Riga. In 1997, 1998 and 1999 Riga managed to attract more foreign investment than any other city in the Baltics; this can, perhaps, be explained by overall economic stabilisation, successful privatisation process and improvements in FDI legislation. It is also suggested that much of foreign investment has been made in Riga because of its infrastructure networks, availability of labour and developed service sector.

 

The city showed extremely good performance in attracting foreign investments in 1996, 1997 and 2000, when cumulative investment grew by more than 100 million dollars. In 2000, for instance, the amount of foreign direct investment in Riga reached 429 million Latvian Lats, which was twice as much as in 1995(see Figure 55 ) .

 

Privatisation of municipal property is considered one of the major economic channels through which foreign investment is flowing into Riga. 

The priority sectors in terms of foreign investments have been transport and communications, financial sector and manufacturing. These sectors of local economy show substantially bigger amounts of investments than other branches. The results of the survey that was organised by the Municipality of Riga in 1999 also can be used as evidence that the leading sectors are still the most attractive.  In 1998 and 1999, with the liberalisation of land market and continuation of privatisation, investments in such sectors as real estate, hotels and energy also increase rapidly (see Table 29 ).

 

  

 

This page was last updated: 2003.03.31.