PM Garibashvili outlines economic development challenges

Ensuring every Georgian citizen embraces and reflects the country’s economic development is the main challenge inhibiting the country’s progress, says Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili.

The Georgian leader expressed this opinion at a forum dedicated to the challenges of economic growth, organized by the World Bank Group in Tbilisi today, February 18.

The political forum, entitled "Challenges of Economic Growth for Georgia" was attended by the Chief Economist of the World Bank for Europe and Central Asia region, Hans Timer, local business representative and Government officials.

"The goal of our government is to create a business environment in Georgia, where every entrepreneur obeys the same rules of doing business. Some of the regulations or regulatory institutes, which cannot exist in the country, based on the European values and Georgia has an ambition of this, have been canceled as a result of the reforms, carried out in the recent years," Garibashvili said.

The country’s social-economic development strategy, "Georgia 2020”, was also discussed at the Forum. The strategy was composed by industry insiders including multiple Ministries, experts and international organizations.

He stressed that the top priority of the government was the achievement of economic growth.

"The previous government had announced liberal economic policy, though in reality, it was not like that. The government was brutally interfering in business activity, which showed its negative effects. They were proud of the figures, which were reflecting the rates of economic growth. In fact, the picture was quite different - the economic growth was not reflected on the social and economic condition of the Georgian population,” Garibashvili said.

He believed that’s why the major challenge of government was "the economic development and progress of the country to really reach every single person, every single family.”

Following the forum, Garibashvili underlined the importance of the forum with the journalists said that the Georgian Government had acquainted the representatives of the World Bank and experts with the major priorities of the development policy of the country, developed by the government.

"We listened to their evaluations. We spoke about the challenges facing our country. We discussed the problems and outlined the ways to solve them. You know that the government has a long-term strategy for the country's development, as well as local industry development strategy, but difficulties still remain,” he said.

Garibashvili believed that his duty as a Prime Minister was telling the truth to Georgian people about where we had problems and care to resolve those problems.