Eesti in brief - 2010-04-07

On April 1, President Ilves presented the Estonia’s Beautiful School award to Valga Basic School, reports president.ee. “Thanks to the teachers and students, Valga Basic School is a modern school with a student-friendly atmosphere, where teamwork and tolerance are the key words, where people regard and cherish the surrounding environment, and where students learn to take responsibility, both in school-life and in general,” said President Ilves. Estonia’s Beautiful School award was presented for the 10th time. The school to win the award is chosen each year by the Estonian Association of Teachers. President Ilves also thanked the teachers of Valga Basic School: “A wise teacher, wise in the most general meaning of the word, helps to shape the lives and choices of their students. Students often only realize in later life the extent of the work done by a teacher, when they realize that the lessons learnt in school become useful in real life.”

The number of registered unemployed fell by 185 last week, the first weekly decline since the crisis, reports bbn.ee. According to a representative of the Ministry of Social Affairs, at least half of the people who were deleted from the register had found new employment. Natalja Kitam, representative at the ministry, said that while it was too early to jump to conclusions, there have been signs for some time that the worst may be over, especially since the unemployment figure has remained unchanged for five weeks. According to the official, unemployment fell in almost all counties except Polva, Rapla and Tartu, where the number of registered unemployed increased by 8, 9 and 46 people, respectively. The figure for Tartu was so high because of one large company redundancy. Kitam emphasized that it is a common misconception that people who no longer receive unemployment benefits such as compensation and insurance are automatically deleted from the unemployment register.

Since the temperature is starting to get warmer, the border guard has decided to forbid going onto the ice at Lake Peipsi starting from April 2. According to the eastern Estonian police prefecture border guard office, the warm weather is starting to melt the ice and, as explained the head of the police division Juhan Voist, the few degree increase in the average temperature registered during the last few days has melted the ice to a thickness of about 30 - 70 cm. Fishermen will be forced to close their winter fishing season and wait for the ice to melt completely. Commenting on what happened during the last winter, Voist mentioned that during the season the police never had to intervene to rescue anyone from the lake, while, instead, had to help people who had gotten exhausted while trying to come back to land after some fishing.

Premia Foods, the largest producer of ice cream, fish products and frozen food products in the Baltics, plans to list its shares in the Tallinn Stock Exchange in the next few months. This would end the three-year draught of no new listings on the Tallinn Stock Exchange, writes Aripaev. In preparation for the listing, Premia Foods increased its holding in GourmetHouse that sells fish products to large retailers, hired Andri Avila, former executive of Olympic Entertainment Group as its new finance director and increased its number of shares to 24.2 million to make the price more attractive for investors.

According to Äripäev, the company has already submtitted an appliation and emission prospect to the financial inspectorate. If everything goes well, the company could list its shares in Tallinn already in April or May.

Indrek Kasela, fund manager of Amber Trust that is one of the largest shareholders of Premia Foods, admitted that the company has been preparing for a possible listing fo the last six months