On 9 August, members of the Tax Working Group of the Investors’ Forum met Edita Janusiene, the newly appointed head of the State Tax Inspectorate. The group members discussed the most common problems faced by investors and presented suggestions for the improvement of the activities of the State Tax Inspectorate.
“We understand that businesses create jobs, pay fair wages and taxes, and therefore our goal is to create favourable conditions for its development”, E. Janusiene emphasised.
Members of the Investors’ Forum say that the newly elected members of the Seimas demonstrated ability to make determined decisions for improving the business environment. In their assessment of the end of the Seimas Spring Session, investors distinguished university optimization plan, the new Labor Code and the amendments to the Forest Law, which have opened a number of SRS reforms and shorten the environmental impact assessment procedures. However, in the last six months, there were also no critically acclaimed decisions, such as additional restrictions on alcohol trade and supplemental Insemination Law.
“The most attractive part of Europe now is Eastern Europe. These are the countries that have been long occupied by the Soviet Union, after it failed in 1991. It became available, integrated in the European Union, but in many ways keeping their independence. They have educated people, and in this regard, the region is one of the most unique in the world. In emerging economies, education and educated society provides a tremendous advantage”, noted G. Friedman.
Partners 4 Value Initiative kindly invites Investors’ Forum’s members to hosting talented and motivated Lithuanian students (pre-selected at national level) for quality local or international internships.
Partners 4 Value initiative is a consortium between the Lithuanian Confederation of Industrialists (LPK) and the lead Lithuanian universities (Vilnius University, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Kaunas University of Technology, Vytautas Magnus University and Klaipeda University) established at national level in Lithuania (hereafter referred as Consortium) aiming to provide motivated and talented Lithuanian undergraduates/graduates with quality international and/or local real-life work experiences, to start graduate internship programmes that would result in reinforced links between education and the world of work.
Receiving organisations would equally benefit from qualified temporary support and early talents pre-selection opportunity. There is an opportunity to combine international and national placements when an approved intern first carries an internship in a Company’s HQ/office abroad and afterwards in the Lithuanian branch or vice versa (international internships are supported through funding mechanisms available for the sending party).
The Initiative is based on individually managed long term partnerships built with receiving organisations to ensure mutual benefits, quality standards and realisation of learning outcomes. Partners 4 Value initiative provides receiving organisations with “one channel” for communication, national pre-selection and ensures individualised relations management.
This initiative was started and managed by the UNDP Lithuania together with participating high education establishments back in 2010. Since the closure of the UNDP country office in Lithuania on 1 July, 2013 the Initiative was entrusted to the Consortium aiming to bring closer universities and business.
Currently the established partners network entails 120 organisations ranging from intergovernmental organisations (UNWTO, UNICRI, IOM, OTIF, UNIDROIT, UNSSC, UNHCR, UNDP, NATO, OSCE), national bodies, think tanks/research institutes, NGOs, private companies from abroad including multinationals. The successful students send-out process was ensured by the Partners 4 Value (90 interns) with positive feedback reported from host organisations and interns themselves (http://partners4value.blogspot.com/). This Initiative also facilitates short working visits/stages for academic staff to assist them developing/revising academic curriculum for making it more responsive to current labour market demands (85 academic staff members sent out).
Differently from the previous stage, the Partners 4 Value initiative targets not only students enrolled in social sciences and humanities study programmes but entails a broad spectrum of prioritized study programmes from technological, biomedical and physical sciences.
Individual partnership relations management will be continuously ensured by former UNDP Lithuania staff (2 coordinators).
The Association “Investors’ Forum”, which unites the largest and most active investors in the Lithuanian economy, evaluated the contribution of the country’s companies, individuals, and organizations to the improvement of the business environment and investment climate in 2022.
Investors‘ expectations are more moderate in this quarter. The value of the index fell slightly last quarter and fell further this quarter again. The results of this quarter reflect investors’ expectations after the start of the war in Ukraine and in the context of other challenging events. The value of the index fell slightly compared to the previous quarter (1.057) and currently stands at 1.025. On the other hand, comparing the value of the index with the same period a year ago, the change is significant. In the second quarter of last year, the value of the index was the highest since 2017. However, when the index value is greater than one, investors have more positive than negative expectations.
