World Bank and EU review Latgale’s special zones in Daugavpils

FTZ News: Andris Skrastiņš of the European Commission’s regional policy office spent Sept. 22 in the media hall at Vienības nams with the officials who handle investment in this part of eastern Latvia. World Bank staff were there. So were people from the Latgale Planning Region, the Latgale Special Economic Zone, town halls and a few ministries in Riga.

It was the quarterly meeting of CuRI Baltics, a Commission and Bank project for the eastern edges of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Latgale is Latvia’s file. The project papers keep coming back to Daugavpils, Rēzekne and Līvāni. The help runs through December 2027. Vidzeme got an update as well.

The SEZ office published a note on Sept. 24. It read like minutes.

Bank researchers had been looking at hiring here and said Latgale does not follow the rest of the country. They want the next pass done town by town. Skills are part of that, and so is the simple question of who is looking for work and who is looking for staff. A Regional Skills Partnership already exists for some of this. The Latgale council of the Latvian Chamber of Commerce and Industry put it together and is the group CuRI uses on workforce matters.

Officials also spent time on credit for local firms and on projects that could be shown to an outside investor. Smaller companies came up, and so did the idea of one office in the region that would handle business paperwork. There was talk of linking those companies to plants that are already here. The note listed the subjects.

Later it said CuRI would take a separate look at Latgale SEZ and at Rēzekne SEZ. That means the rulebook, the industries still open, what managers ask for, what the zone offices provide, industrial land that already has roads and power, and the delays that start after a contract is signed. The action plan attached to the work uses the language these files always use when they describe manufacturing and exports.

Latgale SEZ dates to 2017. A firm chooses a site; if the ministry agrees, that site can enter the regime, provided the zoned land stays under 5 percent of the planning region. In February the Saeima kept the zone going until Dec. 31, 2050 and brought Alūksne municipality in. Rēzekne’s SEZ got the same date.

Early this year the Latgale administration counted 39 companies, 98 contracts, more than 114.2 million euros and about 700 jobs. It said 2025 produced 19 new projects worth nearly 12.5 million euros and at least 83 jobs, the most contracts it had signed in a single year. Combined turnover of firms in the regime, on the office’s figures, rose from about 20 million euros a year at the beginning to more than 500 million. Fiber-optic and optoelectronics plants, Light Guide Optics International among them, are the companies outsiders already know.

CuRI briefing papers on the Latvian side name the planning region and Latgale SEZ as partners on business support. They also mention EastInvest. The Sept. 24 note did not./.


photo: www.invest.latgale.lv