OREANDA-NEWS. July 25, 2011. Valdis Dombrovskis, Prime Minister of the Republic of Latvia, opened a representation of the Latvian American Business Association of California (LABACA) in the Silicon Valley and met Condoleezza Rice, former State Secretary of the United States of America.

Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis: "Europe is steadily increasing its presence in the Silicon Valley; therefore I highly value the opening of the LABACA representation and wish it to become a good take-off point for innovative business ideas from Latvia to enter the global market." Currently six companies of Latvia operate in the LABACA, and they have decided to make a try in the Silicon Valley. The Prime Minister acknowledged the accomplishments and held a discussion with the management of the incubator regarding the possible cooperation models between Latvia and the incubator. The Prime Minister of Latvia was introduced to Veritweet, a product created by Latvian entrepreneurs; this product ensures identity verification of users of the social website Twitter, and the Prime Minister became a user of Veritweet.

Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis participated in the Stanford Business Seminar; at this Seminar several perspective companies from Latvia were presented - Exigen, Tilde, rentmama.com, DeskTime, MightyFingers, MolPort, Veritweet, Real Sound Lab. and others. During the Seminar Valdis Dombrovskis met Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. State Secretary, and discussed the economic situation in Latvia and the measures undertaken in order to overcome the economic crisis. Condoleezza Rice assessed the strategy of internal devaluation as a correct approach. Concerning cooperation of Latvia and the United States within the framework of the Northern Distribution Network by which the United States delivers food and other products to its units in Afghanistan, the former U.S. Secretary of State shared the view that this Network has an economic potential in promoting cooperation among business of both countries. Valdis Dombrovskis emphasised that the EU Member States have learned goods lessons from the financial crisis and take additional measures to prevent similar shocks in the future.

The Prime Minister of Latvia also participated in a meeting with Google; at this meeting companies Tilde, MolPort, DEAC and Baltic Wind Park presented themselves and offered Google to jointly seek cooperation models, for instance, Tilde proposed cooperation in the area of machine translation, MolPort – in the area of specialised search solutions and delivery of fine chemicals, DEAC – in the area of data centres and e-education support solutions, but BWP – in the area of green energy. Google representatives acknowledged all ideas of the companies of Latvia and agreed to seek opportunities for mutually advantageous cooperation. The Investment Development Agency of Latvia offered Google to consider Latvia as a location for its support and research centres.

The delegation of Latvia also met representatives of Cisco and Juniper Networks and offered them to consider Latvia as an advantageous location for its research and development centres or other support or development units.