At last, the Latvian economy is growing much faster than those of Lithuania and Estonia! In the first quarter, Latvia’s GDP grew by 6.7% compared to the beginning of last year. In Estonia and Lithuania, these figures were 4.3% and 4.6% respectively. These are seasonally unadjusted data – in the adjusted figures, the situation in our neighbouring countries was almost the same, only the other way around – 4.7% and 4.3% respectively across Latvia’s northern and southern borders. Calculated this way, Latvia’s economy grew by 6.4% over the year. In turn, compared to the previous period, growth was 3.6% – a very impressive figure, and such success was facilitated by the impact of last autumn’s lockdown on the 4th quarter result. In Estonia, quarterly growth has almost stalled (0.1%), while in Lithuania it was 1.0%. However, it should be added that the rapid quarterly increase was mainly driven by a one-fifth rise in the collection of product taxes, while value added grew by 0.7% against the end of last year. (...) Photo by Snapwire used