The plans of international investors have been adjusted due to the Covid-19. Nonetheless, the Lithuanian Government’s press release maintains that in Lithuania “the economic situation remains stable, while the balance between recruitment and redundancies has seen consistent improvement”. To reinforce this message, Mr G. Valuckas, a shareholder and the head of Investment Partner, approaches the situation in the business with cautious optimism and emphasizes that “the quarantine was followed by an even greater interest in greenfield investments”. Foreign companies are rapidly adapting to the changing business environment and are in search of the optimal solutions.

International businesses will explore opportunities to reduce the risks associated with supply chains by shortening and diversifying them. The initial supply shock caused by the reliance on China will encourage companies to improve their supply chain resilience by shifting production to countries closer to the end user and through supplier diversification. The United Nations’ division for trade and development has found that this will be one of the main tasks for multinational companies in order to enhance the supply chain resilience to such type of shock or other trade restrictions. It has been noted that the need for the businesses to review their supply chains has not only been brought by the pandemic, but also by the global trade wars, growing demands for supply chain sustainability from consumers and customers and other potentially emerging future trends. The changing corporate cost structure, affected by robotics and other factors, with the investments in fixed assets playing an increasingly pivotal role, will reinforce the nearshoring trend. This opens up the prospect for Lithuania of attracting new greenfield investments to be made by the companies shifting their production capacity from China to the Central and Eastern European region, which will be highly appealing to such investments due to its geographical location, high level of staff competences and attractive investment environment.

Success Story

Investment Partner, which manages the Šiauliai and Kėdainiai FEZ, has been gradually implementing its development plans as its expertise gained in 2019 attracting foreign companies speaks of success in terms of performance.