IMF sees growth in Baltics after ‘painful but necessary’ adjustment

The Baltic states have been “the worst affected corner of the world” in the global economic recession but can return to growth beginning 2011, a senior representative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was quoted by Earthtimes/LETA on Thursday.Speaking at an investment conference in Riga, Mark Allen, the IMF’s senior regional representative for Central and Eastern Europe said unemployment levels in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would continue to rise in 2010 while wages would shrink.According to latest figures from Eurostat, the average unemployment rate among European Union member states is just under ten percent, but in the Baltics unemployment levels are much higher, with Latvian unemployment the highest in the EU at 23 per cent in December 2009.The Estonian rate was 15.2 percent, and Lithuania’s was 14.6 percent.“Unemployment is one of the biggest human costs of the boom and bust cycle. The speed and level to which it has gone up has been particularly hard in these cou ...