A recent survey showed that Lithuania is more attractive for German companies than Estonia. Pan-Baltic comparison shows that Lithuania has increasingly developed into an attractive business location for German companies. The country pushed Estonia back to second place for the first time. Latvian and Lithuanian correspondents evaluated their own business location with less confidence than in previous years. The most attractive business location for Germans is the Czech Republic. According to the survey the most problematic factors that German companies have in the Baltic States are existing macroeconomic imbalances, increasing costs and a lack of workforce.
Kopli district will have its own skyscraper by 2010. By then, Singapore businessman Sonny Aswany hopes to finish renovating textile factory Baltex 2000. Aswani said he hopes detailed plans to be ready by the end of this year, although he admitted things are going slowly. He praised the project by saying they're doing it slowly, but with quality. About a year and a half ago Aswani sold the Kom-munaari boot factory for an undisclosed amount. Aswani is an Estonian citizen living in Singapore. He left Estonia about a year ago. He visits Estonia five-six times a year, since he has a number of enterprises here.
Estonia has established diplomatic ties with the Pacific island nation of Fiji. Estonian Ambassador to the United Kingdom Dr. Margus Laidre and the High Commissioner of Fiji Pio Bosco Tikoisuva signed a Joint Communique in London establishing diplomatic relations between the Republic of Estonia and the Republic of the Fiji Islands on Monday July 14. According to Ambassador Tikoisuva the agreement is driven by the desire of the two countries to promote relations of friendship and co-operation between their respective peoples and countries in the political, economic and cultural fields.
Three ministries have rejected a plan to combine three interior agencies. The plan was to consolidate police, border guard and citizenship and migration boards. It was criticized most strongly by Finance Minister Ivari Padar, a member of the Social Democratic Party. He is in the same party as Interior Minister Juri Pihl. Padar's ministry claimed it was a contradiction with both the coalition agreement and the pension reform plan, which was approved at the end of May. The Ministry of Defense is against a plan not to call up police cadets and officials into military service. The finance ministry named 23 and the foreign ministry 32 reasons why the plan is not acceptable as it is at the moment.
