Georgia expects over one million tourists from Russia

In the first 10 months of the year Georgia hosted 5,406,188 visitors. Photo by N. Alavidze/Agenda.ge.
Agenda.ge, 10 Jul 2017 - 15:26, Tbilisi,Georgia

The Georgian Prime Minister's Special Envoy for Relations with Russia, Zurab Abashidze has summed up his recent meeting with the State Secretary and Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia, Grigory Karasin.

The Abashidze-Karasin meeting was held in Prague three days ago and today Abashidze shared his comments about the meeting with the media.

The meeting touched upon Russian-Georgian commercial and transportation relations. The sides exchanged views on the implementation of the 2011 agreement on the mechanism of customs administration and monitoring of regional trade.

Abashidze said the Russian market has opened to Georgia exactly thanks to such format dialogues.

He said air and land transport links have been restored between Georgia and Russia and this has contributed to growing export and growing number of tourists.

Last year about one million tourists came to Georgia from Russia. This year we expect more tourists from Russia,” said Abashidze.

Furthermore, he stated that the dialogue helped solve certain problems between the two countries. As an example he mentioned the release of eight citizens of Georgia who were sentenced for espionage in Russia.

The Abashidze-Karasin meeting in Prague is the only format of direct dialogue between Georgia and Russia since the two countries cut off their diplomatic ties after the 2008 war. The format was launched in late 2012 and covers only humanitarian, trade and economic related issues. It does not touch upon politics. Political issues are mainly in focus of the IPRM meetings where international negotiators facilitate talks between Georgia, Russia and the de-facto leadership of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali region - the two Georgian regions that are currently occupied by Russia.

The next meeting in Prague is scheduled for autumn.