Georgia seeks investors for big projects in agricultural sector

Georgia’s exports and imports dropped by 13% in January-April 2015. Photo by N. Alavidze/Agenda.ge
Agenda.ge, 01 Oct 2015 - 12:36, Tbilisi,Georgia

Georgia is taking decisive action to restore the country to its agrarian state through several state projects, which are developing the industry and offering a range of promising investment opportunities for investors of large-scaled projects.

Developing the local agricultural industry was one of the main priorities of the current Government, as was encouraging investors to utilise Georgia’s favourable investment conditions.

Georgia’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture Gocha Tsopurashvili spoke about the efforts taken to develop the industry to APK-Inform – an agribusiness consulting agency within CIS countries - journalists this week.

He stated Georgia had established a special co-financing fund to assist the investors to realise large-scaled projects in the agricultural sector.

Tsopurashvili specified an investor could provide only half of the required sum, and the fund would provide the other half. At the same time, the investor could later buy out the fund’s share. In addition, if the investor had any proposal that met the public interests, such as construction of any plant or processing complex, the authorities might offer an area of land for the project for free.

Additionally, depending on the invested sum, the authorities could compensate one quarter, one fifth or one sixth of the sum with certain assets. Tsopurashvili used the example that if an investor wanted to invest $1.2 million USD in an agricultural project, then it was possible for the state to give the investor $300,000 USD in the form of property.

Meanwhile, the APK-Inform agency announced the international conference Georgia Agro Forum 2015 will be held on November 19 at ExpoGeorgia, Tbilisi, where participants will discuss development prospects of Georgia’s agriculture sector and its investment attractiveness.