PM Garibashvili says economic recovery is underway

"We have seen a serious recovery of the countrys economy in the third quarter, PM Irakli Garibashvili told Rustavi 2 TV channel yesterday.  

"The next years economic growth is forecasted to be 5 percent which is quite a real forecast and this was approved by international financial institutions. Private sector turnover has increased with about 24 percent and amounted to30 billion GEL. In terms of foreign trade, we have a 4 percent raise. Export has increased to 20 percent in the third quarter and amounted to 2.5 billion USD which is a record rate. I can proudly say that such a rate has never been before. Deriving from these results, we can say that we had a serious recovery in the third term that gives us positive expectations that the economic forecasts are real, Garibashvili said.  

He said the government plans to replace some imports with local products, explaining that imports are exceeding the domestic production by 2.5-3 times which breaks the overall balance and is bad for the country.  

"It is a shame we are importing agricultural products while our most precious part of the land is not cultivated. However, we should also mention that 200 thousand hectares of land have been cultivated this year.   Replacing imports with domestic production is an ideal option which proposes building small and medium-sized enterprises and creation of more jobs, Garibashvili said. According to him, 53 enterprises have been opened with the governmental support during 2013.  

"We are a people oriented government", the PM added.  

Garibashvili has also assessed the current year and said it that has been a really complicated year during which the government has undergone the extremely difficult process of cohabitation.

"We have had the president, who was saying he was a number one opposition. He was traveling around the world and discrediting our government. After we had reduced his authority and he didnt the government dissolution lever, the situation was relatively stabilized but no government can ensure an investor to make an investment in a country which the president  says the government is terrifying destructive power and wants to devastate the courtly. This led us to the economic downturn we have seen but nothing alarming is going on, Garibashvili explained repeating there are very clear signs of economic recovery in Georgia.