| |
Geography
 Located on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, Latvia lies on the East European Plain. It consists of fertile, low-lying plains, largely covered by forest, mostly pines, the highest point being the Gaiziņkalns at 311.6 m (1,020 ft). Common species of wildlife in Latvia include deer, wild boar, fox, beaver and wolves. The Latvian climate is humid, continental and temperate in nature, with temperatures varying on average from -5 °C to +15°C, providing warm-water ports and water to more than 3,000 lakes and over 12,000 rivers, only seventeen of which are longer than 100 kilometers (sixty miles). The major rivers include the Daugava, the Lielupe, the Gauja, and the Salaca.  An inlet of the Baltic Sea, the shallow Gulf of Riga is situated in the northwest of the country. Latvia's coastline extends for 531 kilometers. Its neighbors include Estonia to the north (267 kilometers of common border), Lithuania to the south (453 kilometers), Belarus to the southeast (141 kilometers), and Russia to the east (217 kilometers). Prior to World War II, Latvia bordered eastern Poland, but as a result of boundary changes by the Soviet Union, this part of Poland was attached to Belarus. Latvia de facto lost a part of the former Abrene District (2% of its territory) to Russia in the 1940s.
Economy
 Since the year 2000 Latvia has had one of the highest (GDP) growth rates in Europe. In 2006, annual GDP growth was 11.9% and inflation was 6.2%. Unemployment was 8.5% — almost unchanged compared to the previous two years. However, it has recently dropped to 6.1%, partly due to active economic migration, mostly to Ireland and the United Kingdom. Some believe that Latvia's flat tax is responsible for its high growth rate, but this is not universally accepted. Privatisation has been mostly completed, except for some of the large state-owned utilities. Latvia is a member of the World Trade Organization (1999) and the European Union (2004).
 The fast growing economy is regarded as a possible economic bubble, because it is driven mostly by growth of domestic consumption, financed by a serious increase of private debt, as well as negative foreign trade balance. The prices of real estate, which increases at amount approximately 5% a month (due to lack of tax legislation that could prevent speculations in real estate market), are perceived to be too high for the economy, which mainly produces low valued goods and raw materials. As stated by Ober-Haus, a real estate company operating in Poland and the Baltics, the prices of some segments of real estate market have been stabilised as of summer 2006 and some experts expect serious reduction of real estate prices in the near future. The government introduced special program to reduce inflation and remain high growth rates recently. The main points of the plan are:
- To create a non-deficit country budget for the current 2007 year and a budget with a surplus for 2008 and beyond;
- to tax any transaction concerning real estate that has been in a person's possession less than three years;
- to increase control of credit;
- to increase energy effectiveness in homes and business to guard against possible rises in energy costs, and
- to increase work productivity and stimulate competition in business.
Latvia plans to introduce the Euro as the country's currency but, due to the inflation being above EMU's guidelines, this is unlikely to happen before 2010.
Demographics
Ethnicities
Latvia's population has been multiethnic for centuries, though the demographics shifted dramatically in the twentieth century due to the World Wars, the emigration and removal of Baltic Germans, the Holocaust, and occupation by the Soviet Union. Latvians and Livonians, the indigenous peoples of Latvia, now form about 60% of the population; 28% of the inhabitants are Russian. Approximately 56% of the ethnic Russians living in Latvia are citizens of Latvia. In 2005 there were even fewer Latvians than in 1989, though their share of the population was larger — 1,357,099 (58.8% of the inhabitants).
Languages
The official language of Latvia is Latvian, which belongs to the Baltic language group of the Indo-European language family. Another notable language of Latvia is the nearly extinct Livonian language of Baltic-Finnic subbranch of Uralic language family, which enjoys protection by law; Latgalian language — a dialect of Latvian — is also protected by Latvian law as historical variation of Latvian language. Russian is by far the most widespread minority language, also spoken, or at least understood, by large sections of the non-Russian population.
Religion
The largest religion is Christianity, although only 7% of population attend religious services regularly. The largest groups in 2006 are:
- Roman Catholic — 500,000,
- Lutheran — 450,000
- Eastern Orthodox — 350,000
According to the most recent Eurobarometer Poll 2005, 37% of Latvian citizens responded that "they believe there is a god", whereas 49% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force" and 10% that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, god, or life force".
Lutheranism was much stronger before the Soviet occupation, when the majority was Lutheran, but since then Lutheranism in all the Baltic States has declined to a much greater extent than has Roman Catholicism. There are 182 known Muslims living in Latvia; total number of Muslims in Latvia, however, is estimated to be much larger — from 500 to 5,000. There are also Jews (9,743 in 2006) in Latvia.
There are more than 600 Latvian neopagans Dievturi (The Godskeepers) whose religion is based on Latvian mythology. About 40% of the total population is not affiliated with a specific religion and may be nontheist.
|
|