Georgia’s Finance Ministry pledges to attract more foreign capital

Georgia’s Finance Ministry is stepping up its efforts to attract more foreign capital for implementing large investment projects in the country.

Georgia’s Finance Minister Nodar Khaduri introduced several ideas that would be fulfilled this year regarding how the Government planned to attract more foreign direct investments (FDI) at yesterday’s Parliamentary meeting in Kutaisi.

One of the activities soon to be implemented involved the operation of a new instrument of the World Bank Group’s Global Infrastructure Facility (GIF) in Georgia. This is believed to be an additional source of capital for investment projects.

In addition, the Ministry planned to launch several large Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects. PPP is a Government service or private business venture that is funded and operated through a partnership between the Government and one or more private companies.

Khaduri said the Ministry would also offer Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) grants to investors.

At the same time a "very important” tax reform will be implemented in Georgia this year, which aimed to bring relief to companies that were oriented on investing in the country.

Khaduri said additional sources of foreign capital inflow to Georgia would soon come from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Fund, and an agreement had already been signed by both parties in this respect. This money will be spent on developing infrastructural projects.

Another idea Khaduri presented at the Parliamentary meeting outlined how the Georgian Government planned to launch a new program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which aimed to increase the reliability of Georgia in international financial markets.

While evaluating this year’s budget income, Khaduri said in the first four months of 2015 the state budget income reached 2.99 billion GEL, of which 2.39 billion GEL was generated from tax incomes.