Latvia takes loan from neighbor

  • 2009-07-29
  • From wire reports
TALLINN - Estonia's Minister of Finance Jurgen Ligi acknowledged that the Estonian government will sign up to a 100 million euro loan agreement with Latvia, reported LETA. According to the minister, the planning of the loan agreement will be discussed during work on Estonia's state budget for 2010.
The minister noted that Estonia promised to give a hand to Latvia already long ago due to the deteriorating economic situation in Latvia, which also influences the situation throughout the Baltic States. The minister said that Estonia will show its solidarity with, and its responsibility to situation in neighboring countries.

"We will probably take that amount from our reserves, from extra expenses, and we will compensate for it by taking a loan. There won't be any country who would give a loan to Latvia on the kind of preferential terms as we will, but we consider that we need to help and give our support. We need to be careful at the same time not to make the same mistakes as our neighbors have made," said the minister. 
"We hope that Latvia will get over crisis, which will also help us to cope with our difficulties which we consider would affect positively the reputation of the entire Baltic states region, and which would again draw more attention for investments," said Ligi.

Through this action we would also like to demonstrate that our own situation is much better and we would like to show that we have some reserves from which to provide Latvia with this loan," concluded the minister.