Starting this month, Estonia's ERGO Insurance will use statistics on a vehicle's make and model to calculate the price of insuring it. "The new pricing principles are fairer for the policyholders, because they take more precisely into consideration the risk from the use of the vehicle and the risk profile of the policyholder," said board member Sergei Vahnitski. Due to inflation, average prices will rise 5.8 percent for third-party liability insurance and 3.5 percent for passenger cars, the company says. For the first quarter of 2008, the average indemnity cost in Estonia was about 26,000 kroons (1,660 euros), up from 23,400 kroons in 2006.
Syntagon Baltic, a subsidiary of the Swedish research company Syntagon, has put a hold on plans to invest 2.3 million euros into its expansion in Latvia. Company chief Andis Slaitas blamed slower spending in the pharmaceutical industry but also cited Syntagon's inability to find "high-quality employees fast enough." Slaitas said Syntagon has also been searching for chemists in Lithuania and Estonia without much success and now has extended the search to Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Syntagon Baltic makes intermediary products for the pharmaceutical industry. In fiscal year 2007-2008 the company increased turnover 13 percent to 475,700 lats (679,500 euros). Most of its customers are biotech firms, but Syntagon's clients also include AstraZeneca and four other leading pharmaceutical companies.
Lithuanian IT development and consulting firm ERP has signed a 9 million-euro contract with Kazakhstan's finance ministry to develop an integrated treasury management system. "The task of the project is to develop a system that would enable automated management of the national budget and budgets of administrative units by the Kazakh Finance Ministry, and for collection of taxes and tax redistribution," says ERP CEO Markas Zbarskis. The project will be implemented in two stages and is slated for completion in August or September of 2009. The company has been active in Kazakhstan since 2004. ERP Kazakhstan last year posted revenues of around 3.5 million euros.
