Housing prices in Lithuania grew by 9.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016 year-on-year, which made the growth among the biggest in the European Union, figures from the EU statistics office Eurostat showed on Friday.

 Germany's automated solu tions company Festo is expanding its service center in Lithuania's second-largest city Kaunas, planning to hire another 300 employees within the next three years to double the current employment numbers, informed the foreign investment promotion agency Invest Lithuania.

Latest estimates put the cost of the international railway project Rail Baltic, including the construction of the Kaunas-Vilnius section, at 5.8 bln euros of which Estonia's share is 1.3 bln euros.

Western Union, a global leader in money transfer services, intends to move part of the jobs to Vilnius from Peterborough, a city in the United Kingdom with a large population of Lithuanian emigrants.

Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai (Lithuanian Railways), stevedoring company Bega, state-controlled energy terminals operator Klaipedos Nafta (Klaipeda Oil), the Vilnius Gediminas Technical University and the Klaipeda University on Thursday signed an agreement on development of the railway locomotive powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG).

The Lithuanian and Swedish power transmission system operators and Sweden's ABB have agreed on repairing the NordBalt power interconnection, which frequently experiences technical problems, but no agreement has been signed yet.

Statistics Lithuania informs that in March 2017 the consumer confidence indicator stood at minus 10; against February, it remained unchanged. More pessimistic expectations for the changes in unemployment figures in the coming 12 months were counterbalanced by more optimistic expectations for making at least some savings.

Estonian-owned real estate investment management company Capital Mill plans to invest 3.3 mln euros in a major renovation of a Rimi store in Vilnius, with YIT Kausta, a leading Lithuanian building company, expected to complete the work by late September.

On Wednesday, 29 March the board of independent experts has decided that Kaunas is the city, which will become European Capital of Culture 2022. There were two candidate cities in Lithuania – Kaunas and Klaipėda.

On 29 March, 2017, the Bank of Lithuania granted a non-restricted Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license to IBS Lithuania, the European branch of Hong Kong-based Fintech company – International Business Settlement Holdings Limited. The newly issued non-restricted EMI license with the EU passporting allows IBS Lithuania to provide electronic money issuance and redemption as well as payment services across all the European Union countries, told Invest Lithuania.