Latvia Businessforecast Industry Forecast

The Latvia Business Forecast Report provides essential macroeconomic, political and financial analysis for companies doing business in Latvia. The Latvia Business Forecast Report helps businesses with Latvian market assessment, strategic planning and decision making to promote growth and profitability in Latvia and is an essential tool for CEOs, Chairmen, Finance Directors/CFOs, Managing Directors, Marketing/Sales Directors with commercial interests in this emerging market.

An influential new analysis of Latvia's political, economic and financial prospects through end-2012, just published by award-winning forecasters, Business Monitor International.

 

 

 

Key Uses of the Latvia Business Forecast Report | Latvia's Political Outlook | Latvia's Economic Outlook | Latvia's Business Environment | Key Latvia Industry Sectors | Latvia BMI's Executive Summary | Our Europe Subscribers | Full Range of BMI's Business Forecast Reports

Key Uses for the Latvia Business Forecast Report

  • Forecast the pace and stability of Latvia's economic and industry growth through end-2012
  • Identify and evaluate adverse political and economic trends in Latvia, to facilitate risk mitigation strategies
  • Assess critical shortcomings of Latvia's business environment that pose hidden barriers and costs to corporate profitability
  • Contextualise Latvia's country risks against Europe regional peers using BMI's country comparative risk ratings system
  • Target business opportunities in Latvia's high-growth industry sectors
  • Evaluate external threats to doing business in Latvia, including currency volatility, the commodity price boom and protectionist policies

The Latvia Business Forecast Report by Business Monitor International includes four major sections: Latvia's Political Outlook, Latvia's Economic Outlook, Latvia's Business Environment and Latvia's Key Industry Sectors.

Latvia's Political Outlook:

What are the political risks to doing business in Latvia over the next 5 years?

BMI's Latvia Country Risk Ratings evaluate the short and medium-term threats posed by government instability, adverse economic policy-making, deterioration in the business environment and external shocks.

Latvia Political Outlook Contents

  • SWOT Analysis for the Latvian Market
    Political Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats facing Latvia.
  • Political Stability and Risk Assessment for Latvia
    BMI's Risk Ratings assess explicit short and long-term risks to political stability; latest ratings, rankings and trends for Latvia's risk are compared with Europe regional and global averages.
  • Current Administration and Policy-making in Latvia
    BMI profiles key policy-makers and power-brokers in the Latvian government, assessing threats to the continuity of Latvian economic policy, and likely changes to the business operating environment through end-2012.
  • Latvian Foreign Policy
    BMI examines key trends and shifts in Latvia's foreign relations and alignments with Europe neighbours, the United States and Europe, focusing on external influences.

Key Benefits

  1. Benchmark Latvia's risk profile against its neighbours, the global and regional average, allowing easy comparison of risks between key business markets.
  2. Identify, evaluate and anticipate political and security risks to the business environment in Latvia, and to your company's current operations and future plans.
  3. Gain valuable insights into the Latvian government and policy-making, through BMI's specialist team of analysts and economists, and their exclusive network of private and public sector sources.

Latvia's Economic Outlook:

How will Latvian economic policy-making and performance impact corporate profitability over 2008-12?

BMI provides fully independent 5-year forecasts for Latvia through end-2012 for more than 35 macroeconomic variables. We evaluate Latvian growth, and also forecast the impact of economic management, including central bank policy, on profitability.

Latvia Economic Outlook Contents

The Latvia Business Forecast Report features explicit BMI economic forecasts for Latvia, with supporting commentary and analysis, for end-2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 set against Latvian government views. Underpinning our Latvia forecasts are key assumptions for the global economy through end-2012, covering growth, inflation, employment, trade and investment, interest and exchange rates in the US, Japan and the Euro-zone.

Coverage of Key Economic Issues in Latvia

  • Economic Activity in Latvia
    Real GDP growth; industrial growth; employment growth; inflation and consumer prices; consumption (indicative wages, retail sales, consumer confidence)
  • Fiscal Policy in Latvia
    Current macroeconomic strategy and implementation policies; government finance (revenue, expenditure, budget balance); tax reforms
  • Monetary Policy in Latvia
    Interest rate trends (bank lending and deposit rates); inflation (retail price inflation, consumer price inflation); exchange rate policy in Latvia; Latvian currency controls; influence of foreign direct investment inflows; exchange rates and foreign exchange reserves
  • Balance of Payments in Latvia
    Merchandise trade (exports, imports, trade balance); current account balance
  • Foreign Direct Investment in Latvia
    Foreign direct investment approvals and inflows; the foreign investment climate
  • Latvian External Debt
    Debt profile (short- and long-term debt; public and private sector exposure)

Key Benefits

  1. Rely upon BMI's 100% independent Forecast Scenarios for Latvia and underlying assumptions - we take no advertising and are privately-owned.
  2. Exploit the benefits of BMI's comprehensive and reliable macroeconomic Latvia database, sourced and fully maintained by BMI from an extensive network of private sector, government and multilateral contacts.
  3. Gain key insights into the current and future direction of Latvian government economic policy

Latvia's Business Environment:

How internationally competitive is Latvia's regulatory environment, and what changes can be expected?

BMI assesses levels of transparency, flexibility of labour market, tax burden, development of the banking sector and credit availability, infrastructure and IT, foreign investment regime and trade liberalisation in Latvia.

Latvia Business Environment Contents

  • Latvia's Business Environment Risk Rating with SWOT Analysis
    Short and long-term business environment risk ratings for Latvia, benchmarked against ratings for Europe and neighbouring countries.
  • Country Competitiveness for Latvia
    Competitiveness of Latvia's business operating environment in supporting corporate growth and profitability over the 5-year forecast horizon, compared with regional neighbours.

Coverage of Key Business Environment Issues in Latvia's Domestic Environment

Transparency, cronyism and corruption; labour market flexibility; corporate tax burden; interest rate levels; access of private sector to lines of credit; sophistication of banking sector and stock market; levels of business confidence; infrastructure and IT

  • Foreign Direct Investment in Latvia
    Analysis of foreign investment regime, foreign ownership laws; attractiveness of business environment to foreign investors; review of major foreign direct investments over the last 24 months, and of strategic sectors attracting most interest
  • Foreign Trade with Latvia
    Analysis of trading environment, government trade policy, liberalisation measures, tariffs and membership of trade areas

Latvia's Key Industry Sectors

Which industry sectors in Latvia will grow fastest, and where are the major investment opportunities in the Latvian market?

BMI targets investment opportunities in Latvia's high growth industries, including automotives, food and drink, infrastructure, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, telecommunications and IT.

Coverage of Latvia's Key Industry Sectors - Latvian Market Overview

Size, value and structure of industry; impact of liberalisation and privatisation on sector performance and prospects; friendliness of business environment

  • Latest Developments in Latvia
    Review of latest projects, deals, privatisations, mergers and acquisitions, and implications for sector performance; company rankings for national and multinational companies in Latvia; main industry players by local sales, employee size, market share and main brands, products and services
  • 5-year Industry Forecast for Latvia
    Historic dataset (2003-2007) and BMI forecasts through end-2012, covering headline industry data broken out by sub sector

Key Benefits

  1. Target strategic sector-by-sector opportunities in Latvia's high growth industries, attracting public expenditure and foreign investment; identify key players and competitors driving growth, investment and business opportunities.
  2. Benefit from competitive intelligence on top national and multinational companies operating in Latvia's major industry sectors, including analysis of recent trends in sales and market share, company strategies, product launches and latest deals.

Who buys the Europe Business Forecast Reports?

The Latvia Business Forecast Report is an essential tool for CEOs, Chairmen, Finance Directors/CFOs, Managing Directors, Marketing/Sales Directors with commercial interests in Latvia.

Our Business Forecast Reports are relied upon by corporates, banks, government departments and multinational organisations around the world.

Business Monitor International's Business Forecast Report subscribers include:

Abbott International, Air Liquide, Akzo Nobel, Alcatel, Alpha Cement Group, Atlas Copco, BASF, British American Tobacco Company, Coca-Cola HBC, Colgate Palmolive Romania, Deloitte & Touche, Ericsson Telecommunications Bulgaria Ltd, Ernst & Young, Exxonmobil Ltd, Heineken Brewery, Hewlett- Packard Slovakia, S.r.o, Indesit Company, Microsoft Software, Novartis Pharma Services Inc, Omnitel, Opus Land Development SA, Provident Financial, Raiffeisen Bank, Robert Bosch Elektronika Kft., Siemens Srl, Xerox Ltd 

 

" BMI's Business Forecast Report has proved to be what we were seeking for our strategic planning process. The most useful sections for our purpose are the Central Economic Forecast and the Key Economic Sectors, which will support my team to update our strategic planning for the next 5 years. "
Chief Operating Officer, PSV Company, Romania.

BMI's Executive Summary for Latvia

[TOP]

GDP Growth Set To Continue

Latvia's government is in the midst of a political crisis that risks not only blighting the country's less than spotless reputation for good governance, but also derailing efforts to prevent the economic boom turning to bust. The latest crisis erupted in October following the prime minister's decision to suspend the head of the anti-corruption bureau on the grounds of alleged financial irregularities within his organisation. The legitimacy of the government has, however, been steadily eroded over the past year or so by corruption scandals and allegations of abuse of office that range from seeking to amend laws to support favoured businesses to attempting to muzzle critics in the media.

With a comfortable majority of seats in parliament, the government managed to survive a vote of no-confidence in October; but its opinion poll ratings have plummeted and senior members of the coalition parties know it cannot carry on in its current form. Wholesale changes, beginning with the appointment of a new prime minister, are likely to take place after the 2008 budget completes its parliamentary stages in November. A quick resolution to the crisis is imperative given the need to steer the overheating economy away from danger and to shore up investor confidence.

Provided that economic reforms are not derailed, policy efforts to contain demand pressures should work with emerging cyclical constraints to drive real GDP growth progressively lower in 2008-2009, though a 'soft landing' – which still forms part of BMI's core scenario – is far from assured. We expect real GDP growth to decelerate from 10.2% in 2007 to 6.6% in 2008 and to 5.2%-5.3% in 2009 and 2010 as domestic demand moderates and activity returns to more sustainable levels in sectors such as wholesale and retail trade, real estate, construction and financial intermediation. Thereafter output growth should begin to pick up and we expect the economy to expand by about 6% by 2012.The envisioned easing of domestic demand will lead to lower inflation; but the disinflation process is likely to be reasonably slow and we project annual average inflation of 8.9% in 2008 and 6.4% in 2009.

The business environment is expected to remain reasonably favourable in the near term, though labour shortages and rising production costs are key concerns and the risk of a 'hard landing' remains reasonably high. More encouragingly, the government has signalled its intent to reinvigorate the structural reform process. Working groups have been set up to propose ways to improve export performance, domestic competition, productivity and the supply of labour. The groups are due to report by the end of 2007.

Read about our other Business Forecast Reports  

Asia

Australia, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam

Europe

Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Caucasus, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Kazakhstan & Central Asia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey, Ukraine

Middle East

Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon & Syria, Kuwait, Oman & Yemen, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE

Africa

Angola, Botswana, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Francophone West Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, North Africa, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe

North & South America

Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, East Caribbean, Mexico, Peru, Trinidad & Tobago, Venezuela, West Caribbean

 

Business Monitor International

Business Monitor International
A Market Leader in Country Risk, Industry Intelligence and Company Research

Mermaid House, 2 Puddle Dock, Blackfriars, London EC4V 3DS, UK

BUSINESS MONITOR INTERNATIONAL's country risk analysis and forecasts, market research on leading industries, and multinational company research is relied upon by corporates, banks, government departments and multilateral organisations in over 125 countries around the world.

Country Risk Analysis and Forecasts
BMI
has for 25 years specialised in political risk analysis, financial markets analysis, and macroeconomic forecasts on 175 global markets.

Industry Intelligence and Market Research
BMI's industry research covers Automotives; Banking; Chemicals; Defence & Security; Food & Drink; Freight Transport; Information Technology; Infrastructure; Insurance; Mining; Oil & Gas; Petrochemicals; Pharmaceuticals & Healthcare; Power; Telecommunications, and Tourism.

Company Research
BMI maintains a fully-researched 55,000-site database of multinational company subsidiaries located across global markets.