Interest of Japanese investors in Latvia only to grow in the future

RIGA, Jan 18, BNS - Interest of Japanese investors in Latvia is likely only to grow in the future, said Head of the Investment & Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA) Representative Office in Japan, adding that it would be a logical development.

"The Latvian-Japanese economic relations have now reached the phase of active exchange of goods. Investments will be the next step after the exchange of goods and putting of Latvian-made products on the Japanese retail market," Dmitrijs Belousovs, head of the LIAA foreign economic representation office in Japan, said in the interview to BNS.

He said it was difficult to speak about any general trends as every branch of the Japanese economy had different interests regarding investments in Latvia. "In previous years we were actively promoting opportunities offered by the Latvian transport and infrastructure to Japanese exporters interested in the CIS market (...) but this project got suspended because of the crisis as both the demand in the CIS and the Japanese export amounts decreased," Belousovs said.

Latvia might be attractive to Japanese investors for being close to the CIS market because the Latvian domestic market is small. "For example, if Japanese car manufacturers invest in Poland and the Czech Republic, it is not only closeness to Western Europe that matters to them but also the domestic markets of those countries. We cannot offer them that. What we can offer are services -- transport and transit, IT services," Belousovs said, adding that there have been positive developments also in cooperation with Japan in pharmaceutical and chemical industry.