The Baltic states have announced record high unemployment rates this week, but said they expect the figures to improve during 2000.

Lithuania reported a 10% unemployment rate, its highest figure since independence in 1991. Unemployment in Latvia now stands at around 9%, and 5% in Estonia. Before the collapse of the Russian market, unemployment hovered around 6% in Lithuania and Latvia, and around 2% in Estonia. Unemployment in the countryside and in industrial areas is especially severe. In the rural Akmene district, in northern Lithuania, unemployment has hit 20%, compared to a 7% jobless rate in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. The pro-West, open-market Baltic states are considered the most economically advanced nations of the former Soviet Union. After implementing tough market reforms in the early _90s, they experienced strong growth until early 1998. But regional farmers and producers were hit hard later that year by the deepening economic crisis in neighboring Russia, which had been one of their main export markets. With falling orders, many industries laid off workers. Analysts say higher growth this year, spurred on partly by the successful reorientation of many exporters to new Western markets, should help bring jobless rates back down. Officials in all three Baltic states forecast that their economies will expand by at least 3-4 percent in 2000.