Estonia’s central bank, the Bank of Estonia, will stop ordering one and two-cent coins as of 2025, ERR reports. Under new rounding rules, cash transactions will be rounded to the nearest five cents. Rait Roosve, head of the Bank of Estonia’s cash and payment systems department, noted that the smallest coins were seldom used for…
US electric car maker Tesla has opened its first pop-up store in Lithuania, BNS reports. The store is located at the Akropolis shopping mall in Vilnius. The company plans to open a permanent store and service centre in Vilnius in early 2025, Invest Lithuania reported. Tesla’s Dutch arm, Tesla International, established a subsidiary in Lithuania…
One of Estonia’s wealthiest businessmen, Margus Linnamäe, will buy out his business partner, Ivar Vendelin, in the Apollo and MM Group investment companies, ERR reports. Vendelin will focus on real estate investments instead. Following the transaction, Apollo will be fully owned by MM Group. Linnamäe will own 98% and lawyer Aare Kurist the remaining 2%…
The Lithuanian parliament, the Seimas, has approved in first reading a bill that would oblige foreign workers to serve customers in Lithuanian, BNS reports. Altogether 100 MPs voted in favour, 5 against, and 14 abstained. Under the amendments, the language requirement would only apply to employees who have direct contact with clients. Also, manufacturers, sellers,…
Lithuanian fashion retail group Apranga Group posted a retail turnover (including VAT) of EUR 161.6mn in the first half of 2024, which was up 9.4% from the same period of 2023, GlobeNewswire reports. Sales in Lithuania amounted to EUR 96.4mn (up 7.5%), in Latvia to EUR 41.0mn (up 17.1%), and in Estonia to EUR 24.1mn (up…
Latvian fuel retailer Virsi-A (Virsi) posted consolidated unaudited net sales of EUR 343.732mn in 2023, which was down from EUR 375.110mn in 2022, LSM reported. The company’s gross profit amounted to EUR 37.692mn (EUR 32.771mn) and net profit to EUR 5.099mn (EUR 10.370mn). Virsi reported an all-time record EBITDA of EUR 13.7mn in 2023, which was…
Estonia’s retail turnover totalled EUR 10.5bn in 2023, which was down 8% at constant prices compared to 2022, according to preliminary data from Statistics Estonia, ERR reports. The retail turnover of grocery stores declined by 4%, automotive fuel by 5%, and manufactured goods by 11% over a year.
Food prices in Latvia will grow by less than 4% in 2024, Ieva Opmane, economist at the Bank of Latvia, forecast, LSM reports. The price hike will be higher than average inflation but much less than in 2023 and 2022, she said. The rise in food prices will depend on consumer income, energy prices, harvests,…
Estonia’s Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority (TTJA) received over 4,000 consumer complaints in 2023, which was up from a little over 3,500 in 2022, ERR reported. Of all consumer disputes, over 900 related to leaving contractual agreements and 500 to damage. More than 50% of complaints related to purchases of furniture (around 300), health…