Latvian municipalities have begun switching on central heating for households amid the onset of colder weather, LETA reports. Riga’s municipal housing company, Rigas Namu Parvaldnieks (RNP), began providing heating to tenants on 4 October 2024. RNP will turn off heating automatically on warmer days. The Jekabpils municipality will switch on heating in kindergartens first and…
The Estonian government has agreed on switching to need-based social benefits in 2028, Education Minister Kristina Kallas announced, BNS reports. She argued that the state and taxpayers could no longer afford distributing equal support to everyone, and that doing so was not even necessary. Better data would allow the state to provide better personalised services, Kallas…
A total of 544,800 households in Estonia, or 92.9% of all households, have used the internet in 2024, according to data from Statistics Estonia, ERR reports. The most common services used on the internet are online banking (90.4%) and email (89.7%). Another 88% of people use the internet to look for information about products or…
The Latvian government has decided to pay compensation to low-income households for rapid rises in energy prices, LSM reports. The permanent support mechanism will apply to exceptional price increases for electricity, heating, and biomass fuels. Households with per capita income of up to EUR 473 per month and housing expenditure of at least 30% of…
Estonia’s privately-owned gas supplier, Eesti Gaas, will raise the price of natural gas for household consumers as of 1 October 2024 due to fluctuations in European gas market prices, ERR reports. The new tariff will be EUR 0.59 per m3, including VAT. In August 2024, Eesti Gaas cut the gas price to EUR 0.525 per…
Latvia’s gross energy consumption totalled 185 PJ in 2023, which was 1 % less than in 2022, according to provisional data from the Central Statistical Bureau (CSP), LSM reports. Final energy consumption totalled 170 PJ, which was 0.9 % less than in 2022. Transport used 52 PJ (30.6%) of energy, followed by households with 45 PJ…
Estonia’s ruling coalition has abandoned a plan to change the current renewable energy fee, which would have raised EUR 60mn annually and shifted costs from consumers to the state, ERR reported. The senior party in the coalition government, the Estonian Reform Party, rejected the plan, citing concerns about the plan’s financial viability. The changes were…
Estonia’s GDP totalled EUR 37.7 billion at current prices in 2023, which was down 3% from 2022, according to data from Statistics Estonia, ERR reported. Robert Müürsepp, national accounts team lead at Statistics Estonia, said that Estonia’s economy was in broad-based recession in 2023, with decline recorded in most major sectors. Information and communication had…
The growth of household income in Lithuania will exceed inflation by 3-4 times in 2024, Social Security and Labour Minister Monika Navickiene forecasts, BNS reports. The Social Security and Labour Ministry expects that household income will rise by an average 12% on year in 2024, while the Finance Ministry expects Lithuania’s average annual inflation to…