Lithuania: Higher prices for beer in 2007

Beer lovers have to pay more for their favourite drink, Baltic Business News reported January 18. Compared with last summer, the price of 0.5 l bottle has grown about 13 pct. Lithuanian breweries blame rising costs of raw materials. They hope higher prices will be offset by growing salaries and will not drive the consumers away. Imported beers are expected to cost more as well. Forthcoming municipal elections and expensive beer is a bad combination, the good soldier Schweik would say. He believed the government which raises beer prices is doomed.

In March, the Central Project Management Agency (CPMA) will publish calls for large tenders to procure hardware, standard software and stationery. This will be a pilot project aimed at testing a centralised procurement procedure. “Currently, we are seeing a number of cases when contracting authorities procure supplies at a higher cost than they could get at a retail store,” said Viktoras Sirvydis, CPMA director.

Darius Radkevicius, business consultant and owner of a personal company, conducted a training programme in Malaysia and Singapore and hopes the demand for his services will continue to grow in South East Asia. “In December, together with a partner from Latvia we held several training courses in Malaysia and later worked for a week in Singapore,” said Mr. Radkevicius. “We were invited by one of the local banks to Singapore. Using the opportunity, we drew up a study on the local training and consultancy market."

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