CEO: Pork duties will only hurt Latvian consumer

Latvia's decision to place duties on pork imports will bring about a price rise in the country, and it's the consumer who will be affected in the end, the CEO of Estonia's largest pig farming company said last week.
"The price of pork will rise in Latvia, but the industries won't let it eat away their profit," Teet Soorm, board chairman of the Rakvere Lihakombinaat holding AS Ekseko, said in remarks to the regional newspaper Sakala.
Flooded by imports of cheap pork and pigs, Latvia's Parliament on June 5 voted to impose limits on how much pork it will import duty-free and duties for all deliveries over those limits.
"Latvia's pig farming sector is smaller than Estonia's," Soorm said. Still, the Latvian decision violates the Baltic free trade treaty, he added.
"Latvians have developed a strong juice and dairy industry, and there's nothing left to do but ban the import of their products to Estonia," he said.
Soorm said it was difficult to understand why Latvia imposed import duties less than a year before the anticipated accession of the Baltic states to the EU.
"After that the duties will disappear anyway," he said.
"It would be foolish to expect that Latvian hog farmers can get strong during the year and make enough investments in their farms. We have been doing it during the past five years, and we still aren't as efficient as we would like to be," he said.
"That the duties will come was known long in advance and we have prepared ourselves for it," the CEO of Ekseko said.
"This is just extending the agony. We'll see after accession to the European Union who will survive," he said