Baltic trade calling for West Mids businesses
West Midlands businesses are being urged to take advantage of the benefits of trading with the Balkan states. Speaking exclusively to Insider, the Prime Minister of Latvia, Valdis Dombrovskis, said the region’s technical expertise and knowledge on manufacturing meant that the region had “enormous potential” for investment by Latvian businesses.
The Prime Minister was visiting the West Midlands for the Midlands World Trade Forum, at which he addressed a select group of the region’s businesses about the opportunities of trading in the Baltic state.
He said the West Midlands was particularly appealing to Latvian businesses due to its “impressive” array of successful industries “advanced manufacturing, metal processing, medical and thriving ICT sectors”.
He said: “I wanted to take the opportunity to present Latvia as a good investment to West Midlands businesses.
“There are a lot of industrial businesses with enormous potential for Latvian trade. The Baltics is a very good market for West Midlands businesses to get involved in – there are many markets with strong workforces and good working conditions.
“We definitely hope to have attracted investment at the trade forum.”
At the end of the third quarter of 2009, the UK was Latvia's eighth largest export partner and the 20th largest import partner.
The largest groups of commodities imported from the UK to Latvia were machinery and mechanical appliances and electrical equipment (20 per cent of the total UK export to Latvia) followed by chemicals and allied industries (16 per cent), textiles and textiles articles (15 per cent) and food industry products (8 per cent).
The Prime Minister said: “We already have a stable trading relationship with the UK, and we want to make it even stronger. The West Midlands is a good place to enhance the relationship – it is definitely a very interesting place to do business with.”
The Midlands World Trade Forum, which is supported by the West Midlands Chambers of Commerce and by UK Trade and Investment, is the largest networking organisation in the West Midlands for companies involved in international trade.
