Lithuania getting to know China

Total foreign direct investment into Lithuania in 2011 was 1.5 times higher than in 2010, according to Statistics Lithuania and the Bank of Lithuania. It amounted to 3 billion litai ($1.07 billion), a 54 percent year-on-year increase, contributing 2.8 percent of Lithuanian GDP in 2011.

Vaitkevicius suggests more Chinese companies should follow GRG's strategy and take advantage of his country's technology, geography and human resources.

There are 2,000 routes from Lithuania accessing 40 countries. Two of them are designated by the EU's Transportation Commission as among the 10 most important routes in Europe: the north-south highway and the rail route connecting Scandinavia with Central Europe.

Klaipeda, the only ice-free port on the eastern shore of the Baltic, is a regional transport hub connecting sea, land and railway routes from the East to the West.

The seaport handles roughly 7,000 ships and 30 million metric tons of cargo every year, and accepts large tonnage vessels.

"The cost of deploying a technical support specialist from Vilnius to another European city is quite small, and the entire continent is accessible within two or three hours from Lithuania," says Griskevicius of GRG Banking.

"In Germany, it can take that long just to get from one point to another in the same city."

Lithuanians are also the most multilingual people in Central and Eastern Europe. About 90 percent of local people speak a foreign language, and half the population speaks two, including Chinese in many cases, Vaitkevicius adds.

Currently, more than 90 percent of the Lithuanian population has a higher education background, one of the highest among the 27 EU members.

Lithuania also claims to have the fastest Internet speeds in the world.

According to a World Bank report "Doing Business 2010: Reforming through Difficult Times" Lithuania is ranked 26th out of 183 economies on the ease of doing business, and outpaces its neighbors Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland and Russia.

"Lithuania's strong advantages are the higher and professional education system, technological market base, as well as infrastructure," the report states.

zhaoyanrong@chinadaily.com.cn

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