Unemployment rate in Estonia may reach 18 percent

Vahur Kraft, former president of central bank and current member of Confederation of Employers, said this week that unemployment in Estonia may climb to 18 percent.

Speaking at a joint economic forum of Parliament members and executives of Confederation of Employers, Kraft said that the key was to increase productivity that is growing much slower than wages.

Kraft said that if Estonia fails to speed up productivity growth, the nation may be unable to meet eurozone criteria for many years.

“The trust between banks is slowly recovering, but banks still don’t trust borrowers. Until there are doubts about the competitiveness of the Estonian economy, companies are unable to get new capital for investments and social problems will only deepen,” said Kraft.

On November 30 the Labour Market Board had registered 26,219 unemployed, which is 89 pct more than a year before. Compared to October the unemployment rate has grown 16 pct.

28,365 people searched a job through Labour Market Board, 1262 got employed and the board registered 6084 new unemployed. Labour Market Board mediated 4445 job offers during November, on December 1 the board had 2,696 jobs on offer.

Source http://balticbusinessnews.com/default2.aspx

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Estonian parliament to follow lead of Latvia

Political consensus in Latvia has moved in the right direction and hopefully this will serve as a good example to Estonian politicians as well next year," Jurgen Ligi told BNS. Latvia also has importance to us as a warning: violating budget balance over a long time costs very dear," he added.

Regarding measures taken by the Latvian government, Ligi said forceful action was required to stabilize the troubled financial system, but that there probably is not enough strength for more steps in the current difficult situation. Estonia's advantage over Latvia beside the conservative budget policy, is a financial system that does not need support and the large weight of Swedish banking, the lawmaker said.

Estonia's situation will no doubt deteriorate some more and an even bigger problem than our troubles is the fact that finance providers view us as a single Baltic region. Because of that alone we have to keep our fingers crossed for Latvia," Ligi said. The Latvian government decided on Dec. 9 to cut the revenues of the next year's state budget by the equivalent of approximately 20 billion kroons (1.3 b euro) and expenditure by 8.4 billion kroons.

Despite the cuts, the budget is projected to run a deficit of about 15 billion kroons which amounts to approximately 5 percent of gross domestic product. Estonia's ruling coalition parties agreed on 2 billion kroons' worth of cuts in the draft budget for 2009, but the budget is nevertheless likely to have a deficit.

Source http://baltictimes.com/news/articles/21927/

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Tourists name Tallinn the most romantic town in Scandinavia and Baltics

Tallinn came first in an international tourist survey made by the Scandinavian innovation centre Norden, writes Postimees.

The majority of tourists interviewed for the survey chose Tallinn as the city that most met their expectations among fourteen other cities in Scandinavia and Baltic states.

By using tourism offices in cities, Norden interviewed more than 5,000 tourists who had visited Copenhagen, Århus, Malmö, Uppsala, Stockholm, Oslo, Bergen, Helsinki, Tampere, Turku, Reykjavik, Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius.

63 percent of the respondents chose Tallinn as the place to visit because of its cosy atmosphere while 65.4 percent said Tallinn was romantic. “Listen to music, walk around in the Old Town, step into some cafeteria or relax in a spa – in short, enjoy,” is how one Swedish tourist put the benefits of visiting Tallinn.

In terms of atmosphere, Tallinn was followed by Copenhagen and Stockholm. The three last cities in the survey were Tampere, Turku and Arhus. In terms of romantic destinations, Tallinn was followed by Vilnius and Riga.

Tallinn did also well among tourists interested in history, but was second behind Riga.

Source http://balticbusinessnews.com/default2.aspx

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