Encouraging of competitive relations and strengthening of competitive position of domestic producers on both national and EU common market of products and services become one of the main priorities of national economic policy. Latvian national interests are closely related to the maintenance of the competitive environment as an important factor for increase of competitiveness of separate commodity, enterprise or industry, which is able to provide economic growth in the circumstances of declining the business activity and strong competition on internal and external markets. However, fair market competition takes place only on the markets where there are no any essential obstacles and barriers for potential entry of new market actors. That is why the present article is prepared on the basis of case study carried out for Latvian grain processing sector with the purpose to describe and qualitatively assess the effects of various entry barriers, which really exist on the domestic market.

Current paper contains the research concerning the role and concentration of IT specialists in contemporary Latvia. It is based on theoretical findings about the location of creative class in certain areas that meet the requirements of technology, tolerance and talent. At the same time, the advantages of creative people staying in the area are undoubted. Creative class and, first of all, super-creative core of creative class bring economic and technological development into the area it is located at. The goal of the article is to examine areas of creative IT specialist concentration within Latvia. The statistics and dynamics of IT position increase were examined and trends found. In order to define the role of IT specialists in Latvia, the allocations of IT specialists across the country were analysed. Herfindahl-Hirschman Index of Information and communication industry employee concentration was calculated. It was found that IT specialists in Latvia are extremely concentrated. Riga planning region accumulates 91.51% of all IT specialists in Latvia.