- Vice President Corporate Communications of airBaltic, Janis Vanags,

- Tez Tour Operations manager, Jurijs Batkilins,

- Member of the board of Riga International Airpot, Andis Damlics,

- Director of Aviation Services Department of RigaInternationalAirport, Arturs Kokars.

Latvian airline airBaltic has launched its summer flights from Riga to Varna, Bulgaria in cooperation with the international tour operator Tez Tour. The new route offers convenient connections between the two cities and beyond to destinations in the Baltic region, Scandinavia, Russia and the CIS countries.

As part of restructuring initiatives, airBaltic has discontinued a number of routes recording somewhat weaker demand in the summer season; this move makes aircraft capacity available for the Riga – Varna service for airBaltic customers travelling between the two cities and onwards to destinations such as Copenhagen, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Stockholm, Oslo, Vilnius, Tallinn. airBaltic operates flights from Riga to Varna two times a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. Passengers board a Boeing 737-300 aircraft for a flight that lasts for 2 hours 40 minutes. Return ticket price starts at EUR 199, including airport fees and transaction costs.

airBaltic serves over 60 destinations from its home base in Riga, Latvia. From every one of these locations, airBaltic offers convenient connections via North Hub Riga to its network spanning Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, CIS and the Middle East.

Tez Tour offers charter flight to travellers all year round. Tez Tour customers are welcome to visit Turkey, Greece, Spain, Egypt, UAE, Thailand, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Maldives, as well as skiing resorts in Austria, Italy and Andorra.

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Only last year Elron replaced the old rolling stock with new electric trains. The new carriages were designed to be wider more comfortable seating with arm rests. Passengers are used to being able to board the train without concern for capacity. To curb this unsafe habit Elron have stated that the ticket sellers are to decide if any more passengers may board. Currently when there are too many passengers standing inside the isle it makes the flow of foot fall almost impossible for those wishing to get on and off. When the ticket sellers and the train driver have decided to stop further boarding passengers will be notified through the public address system and at all the stops only the middle section doors will open. As there are presently too few trains in circulation passengers left standing on the platforms will result.

In going forward with new rail plans Elron have had to take a few steps backwards but they are confident that all rail systems will be up to speed in the not too distant future.

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Latvian airline airBaltic has appointed Christophe Viatte as Chief Commercial Officer. Mr Viatte will be responsible for leading airBaltic’s future commercial strategy. He will manage all commercial departments including sales, marketing, e-commerce, customer care, product, revenue management, network planning, cargo and partnerships. Martin Gauss, Chief  Executive Officer of airBaltic: “I am delighted that Christophe is joining our management team. He brings a solid commercial experience that will help airBaltic to build on its success of reshape business turnaround programme.”

Christophe Viatte said: “airBaltic has a strong geographical advantage in the region with its hub in Riga to develop furthermore as a bridge connecting Europe with Russia, C.I.S, Middle East and Asia. I am proud and excited to be joining the management team at such a strategic time for the airline’s development.”

Mr. Viatte has more than 15 years experience in airline industry chiefly in the field of revenue management, pricing, network planning and business development. He joins airBaltic from Czech Airlines where he held the position of Executive Director. In this role, he had responsibility for all network planning and revenue management functions and over the past years, he was active member of a project team that successfully lead to the purchase of 44% Czech Airlines shares by Korean Air in April 2013. Prior to joining Czech Airlines, he also held senior management positions with Malev, Porter Airlines and Air Canada. He holds a Bachelor degree in Management Studies from University of Quebec in Montreal. Mr. Viatte is a Swiss native, aged 40 and he speaks English, French and German.

Christophe Viatte is replacing Michael Grimme, who has decided to pursue new career challenges. Martin Gauss, CEO of airBaltic: “Michael was part of the team that made airBaltic reshape business turnaround programme a success story, and we wish him every success in the future.”

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Mr. Juris Gulbis, Chairman of Lattelecom Management Board stated, ‘Starting from 2008, which is when we commenced fibre optic infrastructure development works in Latvia, we have invested as much as 30 million lats in the network, converting fibre optic Internet into an industry benchmark. Since then the needs of our customers have increased and technologies have undergone further development, making it a generally accepted routine that each individual household would use multiple TV sets, or that each family member would use his or her own computer or smartphone. Total Internet usage has kept growing real fast on our network – each year it has increased by even twice as much on average, which is why we have made a step towards meeting the needs of „a future customer” through upgrading Lattelecom data network capacity up to 1 Gbit/s, which is an unbelievably high speed.’

Mr. Anrijs Matīss, Minister of Transport, considered that, from the point of view of industry growth, it is a highly notable achievement towards enabling availability of high quality and easy to use electronic communications services and quality fulfilment of the objectives laid down in the Digital Agenda for Europe.

Following the increase, the current Internet speed is more than 50 000 times faster than in 1997, when Lattelecom launched the first 19 Kbit/s Internet dial up connection aimed at residential customers.  Sixteen years ago a user would have taken 25 days to download a 5 GB size document, while today this action takes aprox. 40 seconds. Faster bandwidth provides maximum benefit to such households in which multiple computers and TV sets furnished with Interactive TV functionality are used actively and simultaneously by multiple family members, as well as to such individual users by whom large amounts of data (e.g. high resolution videos and photos) are processed on a daily basis.

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The first forum was hosted by David Cameron in London in 2011 which focussed on enterprise, economic growth, boosting employment and people’s well being. In 2012 the forum was hosted in Stockholm, Sweden where discussions were centred on social challenges including older people in employment and women in business and management.

At the end of the forum Prime Minister Dombrovskis thanked each of the PMs for coming to Riga and spoke of the work in place focussing on sustainable cleaner power sources and future intentions in order for Latvia to cut its dependency on outmoded energy solutions.

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The state company, Vides Projekti, has been responsible for looking after the riverbanks, but the financial situation in the second quarter of 2012 has brought this to a halt. In the very beginning of the year, Latvenergo noticed that 700,000 LVL of the money allocated to the project had already disappeared, with nothing to show for it. Now, the Latvian centre for environment, meteorology and geology will be held responsible for the restoration of the riverbanks, although they cannot say exactly what will be done or how, and neither can the Ministry’s Commission on Environmental Protection.  The deputy chief of the centre, Inita Stikute, claims that she has only been informed that this job has been given to the centre, and not what will actually be done. She claims: “when we receive all the required documentation, we will start developing a plan of action. I am certain we can handle this. We only need to organise the works, we will not be assessing and digging everything ourselves”.

Unfortunately, there is only enough funding to prevent further damage, and there are currently not enough resources available to fix most of the damage that has already been done. Reinforcing the riverbanks is extremely expensive and can only temporarily slow down the damage.

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A regulator (when referring to European Union) said, “needs to gather all the necessary information”, the regulator continued with, “to ensure that the aid granted to MLB’s commercial activities is compatible with the Commission’s state-aid rules on restructuring aid.”

The Latvian’s of the Baltic State country are very pleased with this move giving much encouragement to its people.

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UAB Felit own and run the Iceland based IKEA franchise and no doubt this move will take them from strength to strength bringing them closer to being a World Class player.

The chairman of UAB Felit said, “We are delighted to soon be on the ground inVilnius. When IKEA enters a new country it is a significant investment and a long term commitment”. Mr S. Palmason carried on by saying, “We are confident that the IKEA concept will appeal to the people ofLithuaniaand as the IKEA vision states, create a better everyday life for the many people.”

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The Insurance Supervisory Commission and the Securities Commission are to be liquidated post completion.

The SEB in a client note said “After restructuring of the financial market supervision function, it would be financed from instalments of the companies engaged in the financial services.” They carried on my saying “At present, the Bank of Lithuania provides financing for supervision of the credit institutions from its own resources, the Securities Commission is financed from the budget and the Insurance Supervisory Commission – from instalments of insurance companies,”

The Insurance Supervisory Commission recently joined the Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MMoU) part of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS). Joining this has strengthened its integrate.

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