The Lithuanian government and the Bank of Lithuania simplified procedures for obtaining licences for the activities of e-money and payment institutions.

Grand Duke Gediminas issued letters to the Hanseatic league, offering free access to his domains for men of every order and profession from nobles and knights to tillers of the soil.

Poland–Lithuania played a significant role in supplying 16th-century Western Europe with exports of three sorts of goods: grain (rye), cattle (oxen) and fur.

During the administration of the Lithuanian lands by the Russian Empire from 1772 to 1917, one of the most important events that affected economic relations was the emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia.

Having taken advantage of favorable international developments, and driven by its foreign policy aims directed against Lithuanian statehood, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) occupied Lithuania in 1940.

The Soviet era brought Lithuania intensive industrialization and economic integration into the USSR, although the level of technology and state concern for environmental, health, and labor issues lagged far behind Western standards.

Lithuania is a member of the EU and the WTO, so regulation is relatively transparent and efficient, with foreign and domestic capital subject to the same rules.

[62] More than 5,700 enterprises with €2.0 billion worth of state capital in book value were sold using four initial privatization methods: share offerings; auctions; best business plans competitions; and hard currency sales.

On 25 June 1993, the Lithuanian litas was introduced as a freely convertible currency, but on 1 April 1994 it was pegged to the United States dollar at a rate of 4 to 1.

However, the collapse of the Russian ruble in August 1998 shocked the economy into negative growth and forced the reorientation of trade from Russia towards the West.

[73] This was mostly due to rapid loan portfolio growth as Scandinavian banks provided cheap credit under quite lax rules in Lithuania.

[39] Austerity policy (four-fifths of the fiscal adjustment consisted of expenditure cuts)[75] introduced by the Kubilius government helped to balance the current account from −15.5 in 2007 to 1.6 in 2009.

Sectors related to domestic consumption and real estate still suffer from the economic crisis, but exporters have started making profits even with lower levels of revenue.

[78] Lithuania performs well in few measures of well-being in the Better Life Index by OECD, ranking above the average in education and skills, and work-life balance.

It is below the average in income and wealth, jobs and earnings, housing, health status, social connections, civic engagement, environmental quality, personal security, and subjective well-being.

To reach this goal, it is putting its efforts into attracting FDI to added-value sectors, especially IT services, software development, consulting, finance, and logistics.

[84] Well-known international companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Transcom, Barclays, Siemens, SEB, TeliaSonera, Paroc, Wix.com, Philip Morris, Thermo Fisher Scientific established a presence in Lithuania.

There are nine industrial sites in Lithuania, which can also provide additional advantages by having a well-developed infrastructure, offering consultancy service and tax incentives.

Companies that have outsourced their business operations to Lithuania include, Danske Bank, CITCO Group, Western Union, Uber, MIRROR, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Anthill, Adform, Booking Holdings (Kayak.com, Booking.com), HomeToGo, Visma, Unity, Yara International, Nasdaq Nordic, Bentley Systems, Ernst & Young and many more.

[103] Since 2021, Lithuania has issued hundreds of licenses for cryptocurrency exchange and storage services, making it one of the leading countries in the EU for such permits.

In 2018, Google set up a payment company in Lithuania,[107] Vilnius was ranked a seventh FinTech city by foreign direct investment (FDI) performance in 2019.

Year 2019 was exemplary – more than 10 new factories were opened in Lithuania, working in the fields in engineering, high precision instruments, furniture and medical products.

[112] Continental AG in 2018 started to build a factory for high precision car electronics – the biggest greenfield investment project in Lithuania so far.

[113] Another German manufacturer of lighting technology Hella opened a plant in 2018 in Kaunas FEZ, which will produce sensors, actuators and control modules for the automotive industry.

Lithuania's life science sector is growing around 20–25% annually; with special focus on the production and research of biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical devices.

[118] Lithuania has 22,000 rivers and rivulets, 3,000 lakes, a well-developed rural tourism network, a unique coastal area of almost 100 km and four UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

[119] Germany, Poland, Russia, Latvia, and Belarus supply the most tourists, and a significant number arrive from the UK, the USA, Finland, and Italy as well.

[135] The share of tertiary-educated 25–64-year-olds in STEM (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields in Lithuania were above the OECD average (29% and 26% respectively), similarly to business, administration and law (25% and 23% respectively).

[141] As of 2019, Lithuanian average wealth per adult was $50,254 (an increase of 82% from $27,507 in the year 2017) [142] Household debt is among the lowest among EU countries – 49 percent of net disposable income in 2015.

[164] The vast majority of commodities, including oil, gas, and metals have to be imported, mainly from Russia, however in the recent years Lithuania's energy dependence has shifted towards other countries such as Norway and the US.