Company briefs - 2012-08-09

  • 2012-08-08

The banking sector’s profit totaled 78.5 million lats (112.1 million euros) in the first half-year, according to data from the Financial and Capital Market Commission, reports Nozare.lv. Fourteen Latvian banks and five foreign banks’ branches in Latvia operated with a profit in the first six months this year. Their total share of the banking sector’s assets is 90.6 percent. The sector’s profit before provisions and taxes reached 140 million lats in the first half of 2012, 24 percent more than in the same period last year. Provisions for bad debts dropped 14.6 percent. The capital adequacy ratio stayed high, at 17.2 percent at the end of June. The minimum capital requirement is 8 percent. Since the beginning of the year, eight banks have increased their capital by 20.5 million lats altogether.

Turnover of tobacco retailer/distributor Philip Morris Latvia reached 68.3 million lats (97.6 million euros) last year, according to information available on Firmas.lv. This is 16.3 percent more than in 2010. However, profits in 2011 decreased by 25 percent to 338,279 lats, down from 451,294 lats the previous year. Philip Morris Latvia is the sole Latvian importer for the international tobacco concern Philip Morris International. The company has operated in Latvia since 2000.

Eesti Energia launched at the end of July in Auvere, near Narva, tests of its first Enefit280 oil shale plant, and, if all goes according to plan, the first oil from the new plant will be delivered in September, reports Aripaev Online. The company launched construction of the first new generation technology Enefit280 oil plant in the spring of 2010. 182 million euros has been invested in the new plant so far. One Enefit280 oil plant adds to Eesti Energia’s production capacity nearly 2 million barrels of shale oil a year as well as 75 million cubic meters of shale gas. The plant will employ 80 people. Eesti Energia wants to build a complex producing liquid fuel from oil shale by 2016, and intends to build two more Enefit280 factories and a refinery by then. The complex’s production volume would enable covering all of Estonia’s needs for liquid fuel.