Azerbaijan, Baku, April 6 / Trend S. Agayeva /
Lithuania intends to cooperate with Azerbaijan to draw in additional mutual investments.
"Azerbaijan ranks 56th in terms of foreign direct investments in Lithuania, the Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius said in an interview with Trend.
"Lithuania's direct foreign investments in Azerbaijan rank 35th compared to all Lithuania's foreign investments," he said. "Our countries must work hard to attract additional funds."
"The Lithuanian government maintains that Azerbaijani investors would show an interest in opportunities to invest in sanitary centres, hotels and other tourist infrastructure in the country,' he said.
"Our cooperation in the tax area and in particular, the registration of taxpayers, combating tax evasion, use of electronic tax returns and information exchange makes our investment climate more clear and helps attract more mutual investments," he said.
"The trade turnover between the two countries is constantly growing," he said. "It increased by 34 per cent to $49 million in 2012 compared to 2011. The volume of Lithuanian exports to Azerbaijan increased by 52 per cent and amounted to $45 million."
Last year, our trade turnover reached the highest level for five years. Of course, our potential has not been exhausted yet."
"There is a bilateral intergovernmental commission on cooperation between Azerbaijan and Lithuania," he said. "It is possible to identify the most urgent issues of economic cooperation in this format. The commission is developing collaboration in such fields as industry, energy, transport, agriculture, culture, tourism, education and health care, communication and information technology."
He added that the two countries must use their comparative advantages to increase trade turnover. "We see particularly good prospects for bilateral economic relations between Lithuania and Azerbaijan in the areas of new technologies, export of food products, design, construction and building materials, as well as export of processed wood. Lithuania also sees great prospects for cooperation in the tourism sector, particularly health and sanitary."