Two new services aimed at simplifying the work of business owners have been added to Estonia's trilingual state online portal eesti.ee – financing companies and fixed-term liabilities, the Information System Authority (RIA) announced Wednesday.

While to date, the Estonian state has developed e-services for citizens and residents, such as online income tax returns and family benefits, Anneli Põldra, corporate digital gateway project manager at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications (MKM), says it has now turned its attention toward business owners, according to a press release.

"To enable business owners to focus on their primary activity, we've created two new services to support them in their operations, in cooperation with the RIA, which are available in the state portal eesti.ee," Põldra said.

The service for financing companies will help businesses find and apply for funding opportunities offered by the public sector as quickly and easily as possible, bringing together funding options offered by the Agricultural Registers and Information Board (PRIA), State Shared Service Center (RTK), Estonian Business and Innovation Agency (EISA) as well as the Environmental Investment Center (KIK). Application rounds via several other state institutions will be added in the future as well.

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The fixed-term liabilities function, meanwhile, will provide business owners information on fixed-term obligations imposed on them by state institutions, such as reporting and financial obligations.

Currently only the Bank of Estonia has joined this service, using it to forward information about statistical reports, but according to the RIA, others slated to join it include Statistics Estonia and the commercial register.

Fulfilling fixed-term liabilities is currently fragmented between various governmental departments and agencies, and according to Kai Kallas, head of the Personal Services Department at the RIA, business owners having better oversight of their obligations as well as the options and deadlines for fulfilling them is important.

"For business owners, creating a single point of contact at eesti.ee should offer assurances that information regarding obligations has been aggregated into a single environment regardless of technical solution," Kallas noted, adding that this will help business owners both save time and better understand regulations.

According to the RIA, the two new services added to eesti.ee are part of a group of ten subprojects currently underway to develop Estonia's digital gateway for business owners.