Latvian Chamber of Commerce severs ties with two companies working with Russia / Article

The list of companies that continue to cooperate with Russia published by the Ministry of Economics in August includes 15 members of the LTRK. Of these, seven companies were already included in the list published by the Ministry in spring, but eight companies were added to the list later. Of these eight, one has already left the organization and two are still in the process of being excluded.

The Chairman of the Board of the Latvian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Jānis Endziņš, did not reveal which companies would  be excluded from the organization. However, he explained that one of the companies included in the updated list, which is also a member of the organization, believes that it has been included in the list by mistake, while the other companies are determined to stop exporting to Russia.

“There were different situations – one part of them was that to stop exporting to Russia would mean to liquidate their business, they are not ready to do that, and that is understandable from their point of view, I suppose, purely humanly. Then there was another part that are more like subsidiaries here in Latvia of some international companies, and there the mother companies export some goods to Russia anyway, and here Latvia is just a channel to do that, and it is not a decision of the Latvian managers, but a decision of the shareholders, so they cannot change anything there. I would say that these were the two most typical cases,” Endziņš said.

The list of companies published by the EM in spring included 25 companies that were also members of the LTRK. The organization excluded 12 companies from its membership list, six companies stopped exporting to Russia, but seven were determined to reorient their business towards other markets and end economic relations with Russia.

Endziņš pointed out that there is no set date by which companies have to leave the Russian market, as this is a complicated process for some companies and takes a long time. However, early next year the organization will again collect information on members and check whether they are still exporting to Russia.

The most recent list published by the EM at the end of August included 128 companies that exported to Russia in June.

According to Dace Zīle, Head of the Analytical Service of the Ministry of Economics, the lists of companies are compiled from administrative data and customs declarations of the State Revenue Service in order to identify more accurately those companies for which the Latvian Investment and Development Agency can offer assistance to reorient to other new markets.

“We have received some letters from entrepreneurs who have inquired about, well, two [companies] – one has wanted to explain why they are there and what the specifics of their business are, but we as the Ministry of Economics do not assess this, because in the end administrative data is intended for the conduct and monitoring of administrative processes, not for assessing ethical norms. There are also companies that have wanted to provide an explanation, which we have also published on the website of the Ministry of Economics,” Zīle explained.

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