A senior citizen in Vilnius
Economy

Indexed pensions may not help Lithuanian pensioners, whose payouts are among Europe’s lowest

Even the €8 increase in the average pension will not help pensioners in Lithuania, who receive one of the most frugal pensions in Europe. President Dalia Grybauskaitė is encouraging lawmakers to index pensions, which would make them increase together with growing average wages in the nation, and the prime minister, Algirdas Butkevičius, believes that indexing pensions would make them grow by up to 6 or 7 percent. […]

Gitanas Nausėda
Economy

Modest growth or stagnation: what happened in Lithuania in 2015?

According to Gitanas Nausėda, the advisor of the president of SEB Bank, 2015 wasn’t a very special year for Lithuania, though, considering Lithuania’s GDP growth, it would be wrong to call it a stagnant year as well. […]

Lukoil petrol station
Economy

Why is Lukoil really leaving Lithuania?

Just before Christmas, Lukoil president Vagit Alekperov announced that Lukoil would start to withdraw from Lithuania and Latvia. However, for a number of Lithuanian economists it appeared strange that one of the main reasons why Lukoil said that it had decided to withdraw from Lithuania and Latvia was not linked to the company‘s move to performance optimization and a switch on the wholesale oil market, but rather the anti-Russian mood in the two countries, alfa.lt reports. […]

Economy

Will Lithuania survive without EU structural funds?

This is the last financial period that Lithuania is entitled to billions of euros in support from the European Union‘s structural funds. After 2020, the cash flow from the EU coffers will decrease significantly and Lithuania will have to learn to do without the support that currently makes a sizable contribution to its economy. Some economists say that unless the country uses the current funding right, economic growth after 2020 might all but stop. Others are more optimistic, insisting that Lithuania’s economy is stable enough to sustain growth even without EU injections. […]

The Moscow Kremlin
Uncategorized

Can “economic Molotov cocktail” explode Moscow?

The two-thousand-strong protest rally in Moscow this week, triggered by a court sentence for anti-Kremlin campaigner Alexei Navalny and his brother, shows that, despite all the effort, Vladimir Putin‘s regime has not completely crushed the opposition in Russia. A Maidan in Moscow is probably Putin’s worst nightmare. Can it come true? […]

No Picture
Economy

Economists warn Russia’s new restrictions might affect Lithuania’s entire economy

If stepped-up checks of Lithuanian trucks at the Russian border remain in place for an extended period of time, Lithuania’s transport sector would suffer substantial losses, which may hit hard the entire national economy, the economists have warned, adding that new Russia’s restrictions will undermine Lithuania’s competitive edge in the region, as far as re-exports of goods from the West to Russia are concerned. […]

No Picture
Economy

Russian embargo impact on Lithuanian economy overstated, financial analyst says

Advisor to the SEB Bank president, financial analyst Gitanas Nausėda says that the impact of Russia‘s food product embargo on the Lithuanian economy has been greatly overstated. […]