"This year we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the restoration of diplomatic relations between Lithuania and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Luxembourg is an important investor, with direct investments in Lithuania amounting to almost €1.2 billion. It ranks 8th in this indicator. We are interested in strengthening economic cooperation with Luxembourg, especially in the areas of high added value: life sciences, high-tech industry, lasers, start-ups and space technologies," said Minister of the Economy and Innovation A. Armonaitė.
The Minister underlines the importance of Lithuanian lasers and life sciences. Lithuania's laser industry has built its reputation on lasers for academic research, and today 95 of the world's top 100 universities use laser technologies developed and manufactured in Lithuania. Lithuanian lasers are used by NASA, CERN and other world-class organisations.
Over the last decade, the Lithuanian laser industry has been making a strong push into the industrial laser market - currently, almost half of our lasers sold are industrial.
The biotechnology sector is one of the fastest growing in Lithuania, with growth rates well above the European average. Life sciences is one of this Government's priority sectors, with a strategic goal of a comparative share of life sciences of 5% of GDP by 2030.
21 May 2021 Lithuania has become an associate member of the European Space Agency (ESA) and has already adopted a high-level strategy for the development of Lithuanian space. It aims to help at least 25 space start-ups establish themselves by 2027, to set up an ESA business incubation centre and to mobilise the space community. These are just some of the measures aimed at boosting Lithuania's space sector to reach 1% of the country's GDP within the timeframe.
The Minister also invited Luxembourg companies to the international specialised exhibition of innovation, manufacturing and engineering solutions "Balttechnika 2022" in October this year, the European Forum for Industrial Biotechnology and Bioeconomy (EFIB) and the Life Sciences Baltics event in September next year.
