Prime Minister Goes One-on-One With Patch

Patch local editor Martin Henderson secured the only one-on-one media interview with Valdis Dombrovskis, the Prime Minister of Latvia, on Sunday during his visit to Rancho Santa Margarita. Only 39, Dombrovskis served as his country's Minister of Finance before becoming prime minister in March, 2009. He was a research assistant in the School of Engineering at the University of Maryland in 1998.

Dr. Juris Bunkis, the new honorary consul to Latvia whose office is in Rancho Santa Margarita, joined the conversation at one point during the late afternoon reception in Coto de Caza.

Patch: Is this your first time to California?

Valdis Dombrovskis: As a prime minister, yes, but all in all, no. When I was studying in Maryland, I came here as a tourist, as a friendly, basically.

Patch: What has been your impression of Rancho Santa Margarita?

Dombrovskis: This is an excellent place. We were really impressed and had a very good event at city council with the mayor. He gave us some stats on the city—it’s quite impressive.

Patch: Are you inclined to go back to Latvia and recommend Rancho Santa Margarita as a place for companies to do business?

Dombrovskis: We have our honorary consul here, Juris here, and he promised to work on establishing those economical ties. I would rather not say only Rancho Santa Margarita but other Southern California cities because he’s consul for all of Southern California.

Patch: (Bunkis) said this opportunity came out of the blue. They contacted him. What has been your impression of him?

Dombrovskis: Really, the embassy has done a great job for selecting candidates, selecting people who really are willing to promote this cooperation—economical cooperation—between Latvia and the U.S., who are able to do, who have connections. From what we are hearing and seeing, it looks like Juris is certainly up to the challenge and hopefully we will be very lucky with him on the honorary consul.

Patch: You’re pretty optimistic about the business back-and-forth between countries?

Dombrovskis: That was one of Juris’ first promises, to bring a business delegation from Orange County and L.A. to Latvia within a year.

Patch: You’re having a conference tomorrow (at Allergan in Irvine)?

Dombrovskis: Yes, a business roundtable. We have a strong business delegation with us, some 40 people delegation, also looking to possibilities for Latvian companies here, for U.S. investment in Latvia, so we have been making many meetings before already, in Washington D.C., San Francisco, Silicon Valley, here in L.A. and Orange County, and tomorrow night we’re heading to Austin and finishing in New York.

Juris Bunkis: The idea of the Allergan roundtable discussion., we’re trying to pair up Latvia needs with local CEOs. Latvia’s interest in building a liquid natural gas terminal in (the capital city of) Riga, for example; we’ll have someone from (San Diego-based) Sempra Energy there to discuss what Sempra energy does in building LNG terminals.

Patch: Is there anything you want to get off your chest, anything you want to say?

Dombrovskis: We have very good relations with U.S. politically, U.S. is also strategical partners, we do many things in NATO together. In Afghanistan, we helped to establish the so-called northern distribution network where U.S. goods are delivered to Afghanistan via Latvia, and then Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan to Afghanistan as an alternative route to southern distribution which is through Pakistan. Our feeling is that while having those excellent political relations, there still is a potential to intensify economic cooperation. That’s why at this time we’re concentrating exactly on economic matters.

Patch: For you, what would constitute success in terms of business relations with the U.S.?

Dombrovskis: Certainly success would be some major U.S. investments in Latvia, some big us companies opening factories, opening service centers, other issues, and increase in trade turnover. Trade is a two-way possibility, so it means you can’t concentrate only on exports, you have to work that it’s balanced in both directions so that both sides are interested.

 Patch: What does Latvia have to offer the U.S.?

Dombrovskis: Our business delegation represents pretty good sectors that are interested in cooperation. It’s energy, information and communication technologies, finance sector, and also some other large industries in Latvia like wood processing, machinery, chemicals, pharmacies, so there are in fact quite a few things that can be done starting at very basic things and ending up with like audio signal processing. We are meeting with Dolby Laboratories—we have a couple of very good companies for signal processing in Latvia.