1. Republic of Latvia
October 2017

2. Latvia: Key Facts and Milestones
High income(1), advanced economy(2)
Key Facts about Latvia
Territory: 64,573 sq. km
Capital: Riga (population 0.64 million)
Population (1/1/2016): 1,97 million
GDP per capita (2015): EUR 12,329
Central state budget (2016): EUR 8,33 billion
Currency: Euro (since 2014)
OECD membership: Since 2016
Credit ratings: A- / A3 / A- (S&P / Moody’s / Fitch, all stable)
Cohesion policy allocation: EUR 4,5 billion
Main trade partners: Lithuania, Esonia, Germany, Poland, Russia
RIS 3 priority areas:
1) bio economy
2) bio medicine & pharmacy
3) smart materials & engineering;
4) smart energy
5) ICT
Main economic sectors:
Services (73.9% GDP in 2015): logistics, IT, financial services, trade
Manufacturing (14.6% of GDP in 2015): wood, metal, chemicals, pharma, food
(this is one of the most important slides, because it presents the country, and every key-aspect)
Latvia is one of the 3 Baltic States.
It joined the EU in 2004 and is a member of the Eurozone since 2014 (Latvia held the Presidency of the EU Council in the first half of 2015).
Latvia is also a member of NATO and is planning to join the OECD in 2016 as the accession process is underway. On 11 May, 2016  OECD countries agreed to invite Latvia to become a member of the Organisation, a move that would extend OECD’s membership to 35 countries. And the agreement is planned to sign in the beginning of the June (2nd?).
Latvia is an open and very dynamic export-oriented economy.
Services account for almost 3/4 of GDP, with transport and logistics playing a key role.
Latvia has also a strong manufacturing with wood, metal, chemical, pharma and food processing being key sectors of the economy.
After suffering from the crisis in , the Latvian Government undertook bold and successful reforms, front-loading the most difficult ones.
It committed to, applied, and continues to implement a strict fiscal discipline, coupled with sustainable public debt management.
Doing so, the Government restored growth, making the country one the fastest-growing in the EU with a 3,7% average GDP growth over the last 5 years.
The outstanding results of these reform were acknowledged by rating agencies and Latvia is now rated A3, A-, A- (all stable) by the 3 main rating agencies.
Thanks to the reform dynamics and sound macroeconomic fundamentals, Latvia enjoyed as much a 4 rating upgrades over the last 2 years. 2

3. RIS3 Strategy : Challenges and OBJECTIVES
Main challenges
Demography & geography
Modest innovation
Small internal market, low cooperation
Productivity
Education system
Objective: change of economic model
Change in manufacturing and export structure towards knowledge and inovation based products and businesses
Identifying and capitalizing on emerging industries
Ensuring adequate human resources 3

4. EU funded project (15.9 MEUR)
Research Center for Information, Communication and Signaling Technologies
EU funded project (15.9 MEUR)
5 Latvian universities and research institutes – RTU, LU, LU Institue of Mathemathics and Informatics, Institute of Electronics and Comupter Science, Engineering research Institute “Ventspils International Radio Astronomy Center” of Ventspils University College
Renovation of RT32 and RT16 antennas at Ventspils International Radio Astronomy Center in Irbene
As a result: Irbene radiotelescope included in The European very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) Network opening further research possibilities
Further project activities include renovation and upgrading of research infrastructure at participating research institutes
Allows to
Observe interstellar objects and Sun
Radiolocate asteroids and artificial bodies, including cosmic debris

5. Competence Centre of Information and Communication Technologies
EU funded project (~20 MEUR in total)
Collaboration between IT sector companies and universities
Main research directions
Natural language technologies
Business process analyses technologies
Results achieved (up to now)
creation of services for remote monitoring, diagnosis and treatment of patients using telecommunication technologies
Solutions for data protection in mobile devices (prevention of data theft, tapping, increase of data security in a variety of sensitive areas (eg medicine, financial sector, national defense))
Introduction of remote meter reading and analysis sistem for smart buildings
Unique orthographic and phonetically labeled speech enclosure for the Latvian language and machine translation services for other Baltic languages 5

6. Thank you!