On April 7, the cabinet studied measures necessary to remove trade barriers. Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius' spokesman said the government leader encouraged all the institutions to pay special heed to relationships with Latvia.
The conference on issues of trade with Latvia, with major exporter and carrier executives, and foreign, economy and transport vice-ministers present, stressed the neighbouring Baltic state was a major trade partner and, owing to a positive trade balance in favor of Lithuania, the most useful one. Presently, Latvian export to Lithuania exceeds that to Russia.
As to Latvia-bound Lithuanian export, over one-third of exported goods are minerals (oil products), with constantly growing export of finished foodstuffs and a strong position of furniture manufacturers and motor carriers in Latvia. Lithuanian carriers handle 80 percent of freight from the ports of Latvia. But there is a decline in volumes of machine and equipment, and chemical product export, pushed by increasing import from Latvia.
Experts, however, pinpoint a clear disproportion in the general positive background of trade, e. g., Latvia exports 40 times more types of wine to Lithuania than vice versa. They explain such imbalance by the fact that Latvia exports cheap, low-quality drinks, taking advantage of liberal import rules, but has imposed high standards for Lithuanian wines. In addition, Riga resorted to sanitary barriers to restrict the import of Lithuanian eggs.
On April 7, the business people pledged to inform the Foreign Ministry about nontariff barriers applied by Latvia to their goods, in order to institute talks. The government of Lithuania intends to discuss a possible reduction of the pledge required from exporters, since the current one amounts to 5 million litas ($1.25 million).
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