Latvija in brief - 2010-11-25

About fifty-five percent of borrowers admit that they have lately had problems with timely loan payments, whereas 44.3 percent of residents who have debt obligations of any kind continue to make their monthly payments on time, according to a poll carried out by the market research company Tirgzinis, reports Nozare.lv. Thirty-eight percent said that they had tried to agree with the credit institution on changing loan repayment terms, however, the banks were not very cooperative. Almost fourteen percent said that they did not care about their debts. 30.6 percent of respondents said that a bank-issued mortgage was their main debt. 61.7 percent said that less than half of their family’s income was spent on the repayment of their debts.

The European Commission has written an official letter expressing concern at the quality of road work carried out in Latvia using European Union funds, reported the Latvian State Television program De facto. During the last planning period, the European Union allocated 450 million lats (642.8 million euros) for road construction and renovation work in Latvia. European Commission representative Alain Roggeri said that a formal investigation was currently being carried out to ascertain whether fraud or other misuse of these funds had taken place. Diana Rancane, director of the Finance Ministry department responsible for supervision of EU fund spending, insisted that the letter received from the Commission had not specifically mentioned an investigation.

The Farmers Saeima is calling for the VAT rate for basic food items to be reduced to 10 percent, the LNT program 900 Seconds was told by the head of the Farmers Parliament, Juris Lazdins, reports Nozare.lv. The organization plans to submit a letter with this request to several Saeima committees, the Agriculture and Finance Ministries, and the State Revenue Service. The reduced VAT rate would be applied to vegetables, bread, milk, meat, eggs and flour, said Lazdins, adding that this would not only apply to Latvian products, as “we cannot take liberties with this type of protectionism.” Lazdins noted that that similar measures had also been implemented in Poland and Germany.