Summed up

LOSS OF PROFITS: Gas company Lietuvos Dujos announced an audited loss of 13.5 million litas ($3.38 million) for 1999, down from 20.9 million litas posted for the previous year. The natural gas company had reported a loss of 11.77 million litas for 1999 before the audit carried out by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Lithuanian Gas Chief Accountant Antanas Avizinis told the Lietuvos Rytas daily that the bigger part of the loss had come from the company's core business, i.e. gas import and distribution.

SET IN CONCRETE: Kunda Nordic Cement, a company running a large cement factory in north Estonia, on April 13 won the Estonian Investment Agency's annual award for the best contribution by a foreign investor to the Estonian economy. Investments in the Estonian economy by Kunda Nordic Cement last year came to 153.4 million kroons ($9.6 million). Total investments made by the company here reached 532.5 million kroons by the end of the year. The company's turnover in 1999 amounted to 374 million kroons, with export making up 55 percent of the turnover at 205 million kroons. (See Page 12.)

FINLAND'S LOSS: Finland has lost a big part of the transit of goods to and from Russia to the Baltic states after the financial meltdown in Russia in August 1998, the Finnish business newspaper Kauppalehti reported. "We think that we have lost market share especially in Russian export transit, but to a certain extent the same has happened also in import transit," said Juha Silvanto, managing director of Steveco Oy. Steveco, operators in the Finnish sea ports of Kotka and Hamina, said the transit which previously went through Finnish ports now is handled by the ports of Tallinn, Muuga, Riga and Klaipeda.

MORE GAS FOR LITHUANIA: Poland and Norway are planning to sign an agreement this summer on the construction of a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek said. Lithuania has already expressed interest in using Norwegian gas, and Estonia and the Slovak Republic could be interested in the project as well, Buzek said.

HOT SUGAR: The amount of smuggled cheap sugar seized at the Lithuanian border this year has already come to 100 tons, compared to 141 tons of contraband sugar found by Lithuanian frontier guards in 1999. Apart from seven tons held up at the Lithuanian-Kaliningrad frontier, the rest of the sugar was detained at the Belarusian border, the Lithuanian border police department said. This week, the border service of Varena traced over 13 tons of abandoned Belarusian sugar loaded in trucks, though owners of vehicles have not yet been identified. The border police affirm that the price of a 50-kilo sugar sack at the Belarusian border is around 56 litas ($14), but the price increases to 100 litas after the sugar is smuggled into Lithuania, and jumps by another 20 litas when carried further into the country.

CLEAN AS A WHISTLE: April 6, the Latvian cleaning company Serviks Riga received Latvia's Standard certificate LVS ISO 9001. The certificate was given to the company at the World Trade Center in Riga. Serviks Riga was the first professional cleaning company in the Baltic states and is the first company to receive the certificate of quality. In the Baltics, Serviks employs more than 800 people.

TAX ON FUEL: The Estonian Parliament on April 12 voted unanimously in favor of a bill by the Ministry of Agriculture which replaces fuel excise tax refunds to farmers with a lower excise tax on fuel used in agriculture and fishing. The bill, passed with 72 votes, says farmers and fishers can from April 20 this year buy specially marked cheaper diesel fuel on which the excise tax is 0.40 kroons ($0.025) per liter. The reduced excise rate equals from 10.4 percent to 13.1 percent of the excise tax applied to other kinds of engine fuel in Estonia. The normal excise tax rate for diesel currently stands at 3 kroons per liter.

BALTICS ON THE MOVE: The hotel Radisson SAS held the Scandinavian and Baltic states Transport Conference. The conference, April 12 to 13, was to inform the countries involved of the research potential and collaboration possibilities involving transport in the region. Over 200 transport branches from the countries participating at the conference attended.

MONEY IN THE BANK: The Baltic International Bank released its quarterly figures for this year. The bank had a profit of $245,762 for the quarter and its commercial activity grew by 25 percent in March in comparison to February figures. BIB has officially launched a new Internet service where bank customers can find potential buyers for their business services. Customers have the opportunity to make use of the bank's services regarding contracts, financial guarantees from BIB and credit.