Positive economic news (from Estonia)

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The global economic situation has been gloomy in the last months and the newspapers are full of economic misery coming mostly from Greece and Italy. But things are not all bad! In Estonia we have had many great economic developments overall and especially in the IT and technology sector lately. Here is a list of some of them:

The Seedcamp event in London was overwhelmed by "the Estonian Maffia", with 4 out of 20 participants and 2 out of 3 winners coming from Estonia.

Fortumo, the mobile payment provider, was selected as the best Estonian company by Enteprise Estonia. This marks a significant shift of focus to young and innovative startups by the society and government.

The delegation from Brussels is looking for premises for the European IT agency in Tallinn. We hope to have many European IT specialists and decision makers moving to Tallinn. (Tallinn is a nice town with a pretty Old Town so why not.)

Flybe, Utair and Estonian Air have opened many new flightroutes to and from Tallinn. Copterline will start flying between Helsinki and Tallinn again offering commercial helicopter trips lasting less than 18 minutes. They also plan to start flying to St.Petersburg. That combined with Ryanair opening 8 routes from Tallinn is slowly, but surely making it easier to travel here and back.

A character called Viktor Kaasik was convicted for corruption proving again that Estonia has effective measures for fighting corruption.

Estonian annual industrial output growth (23%) was the biggest in EU (3,6%) in july. The production and exports of electricity grew 50%. The production of electricity from renewable sources increased 100% from 2009-2010.

The increase in Finnish alcohol tax and the mess with the major Latvian airline Air Baltic will surely increase the number of tourists both visiting Estonia or flying through Tallinn. :-)

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