Estonia and Finland have every opportunity to develop as a common investment area, Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas said during a visit to Helsinki on October 24th, cites LETA/BNS. “We must aim further than the X-Road or integrated digital services. We have every opportunity to develop a common investment area and mutually strengthen our competitiveness,” Ratas said at a meeting with Finnish entrepreneurs.
According to Ratas, Estonia and Finland can already be considered as a common economic area, but there is still more potential for development. The Estonian economic model is in transformation from labor intensive to capital and research and development intensive activities. The country’s economic policy is increasingly focusing on innovation and new technologies.
“I believe that one way to remain competitive in a global and rapidly developing economic environment is to increase cross-border cooperation, primarily between research institutions and enterprises that support the creation and sharing of knowledge. Estonia and Finland still have many unused opportunities in this field,” Ratas added.
Ratas expressed his gratitude to Finnish entrepreneurs who have greatly invested in Estonia over the years. “Finland is the main economic partner of Estonia with the help of whom Estonian economy has been able to develop and open up to the global economy over the past 26 years,” Ratas said at the meeting with foreign investors in Helsinki in the evening.
“Last year, the sales of goods and services between Estonia and Finland alone amounted to as much as 27% of the Estonian GDP. Last year 2.3 million visitors came from Finland to Estonia, staying overnight for more than 6 million nights. We can only imagine how many jobs stand behind these numbers,” the prime minister said.
