Lietuva in brief - 2010-02-10

Feb 10, 2010

On February 10-11, Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius will be participating in the informal sessions of the European Council, reports ELTA. “For the first time since the Treaty of Lisbon came into force, we have been invited by the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, to discuss the outline of an important EU document, ‘EU 2020 Strategy,’ at the informal sessions and to clarify the issues related to the funding, management and priorities of the strategy. We will present the interests of Lithuania,” said Kubilius. The ‘EU 20 Strategy’ aims at promoting employment and economic growth in the EU member states. During the two sessions, the EU priorities for the immediate future will be discussed - job creation, implementation of innovations, the promotion of science and scientific research, as well as climate change. The ‘EU 2020 Strategy’ is to be ratified by the European Council in June this year.

Lithuania, which successfully sold its Eurobond issue worth 2 billion U.S. dollars at a 7.625 interest rate at the beginning of February, has “borrowed cheaper than last year,” says Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, reports ELTA. “I hear some comments that we have borrowed too expensively. Last October we paid 6.812 interest for a five-year loan of 1.5 billion U.S. dollars. Now we would have paid 6.21 percent in interest for [this] 2 billion U.S. dollars that we have borrowed for ten years, if we borrowed it for five years,” Kubilius said on Feb. 8. Finance Minister Ingrida Simonyte says that no new bonds will be issued in the coming months; despite the better economic outlook, however, there are still plans to borrow around 13 billion litas (3.7 billion euros) this year. The Ministry says it will borrow the same amounts on the domestic market as before as the government borrows there for a shorter period.

SOCIAL BOOKMARKS:   Delicious   Digg   Reddit   Ask   Facebook   MrWong   Netvouz