Baltic States – CIS, Belarus, Forum, Investments, Latvia, Markets and Companies

The minister lauded the fact that both countries' forum has grown into a regional forum with the participation of Estonian, Lithuanian, Finnish, Swedish and Polish delegations, informs LETA.

"Belarus has been constantly developing over the past few years and, for the first time since 2005, the country had a positive foreign trade balance. The country's external debt reduces, the government's priority is a non-deficit budget. Therefore Belarus becomes increasingly attractive to foreign investors," explained Snopkov.

The Belarusian minister pointed out that Latvia and Belarus are similar in terms of investment attraction. The only difference is that Scandinavian investments dominate Latvia, Russian investments – Belarus.

"The diversification of direct foreign investments is our priority. Over the past few years, the number of foreign capital companies in Belarus has grown 40%. Even though foreign capital companies constitute only 8% of Belarus' companies, they generate 25% of total profit," informed Snopkov.

He added that Belarus is particularly interested in regional cooperation and establishing high efficiency production facilities by attracting foreign capital.

As reported, Belarus attracted USD 19.1 million (LVL 10.2 million) worth of direct investments from Latvia in the first nine months of 2012, Belarusian National Agency of Investment and Privatization Director Dmitry Klevzhits pointed out during the forum yesterday.

Last year, Belarus attracted USD 25.7 million (LVL 13.7 million) in investments from Latvia, in 2010 – USD 5.3 million (LVL 2.8 million).