RIGA, Mar 24 (LETA) - Riga City Council decided today to establish the Riga Investment and Tourism Agency (RITA).

The municipal agency is being set up in order to achieve a breakthrough in attracting investment. The new institution is being founded as an agency because such a legal entity would ensure more transparent decision-making and project implementation, representatives of the city council said. 

The Riga Investment and Tourism Agency might start work on April 1. 

Until now, tasks concerning tourism, branding and attraction of investment had been delegated to various institutions - Riga City Council's Foreign Affairs Administration, City Development Department and Riga Tourism and Development Bureau.

Now, it has been decided that it would be more useful to delegate these tasks to one institution to save administrative and financial resources and ensure higher efficiency, avoiding an overlap of competencies. 

Rolands Bogdanovs, head of the investment unit of Riga City Council's City Development Department, said at a news conference on Wednesday that in the next five years, RITA is expected to achieve an efficiency level that would allow it attract up to EUR 1 billion in investment a year. 

In tourism, the target for the next few years is to raise the number of tourists in Riga to 80 percent of the figure achieved in 2019.