PM says Gov’t focusing on defeating poverty, reducing unemployment “in shortest possible time”

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili on Tuesday said his Government was focusing on defeating poverty and reducing unemployment in the country “in the shortest possible time”.

In his remarks at the presentation of the 2022 report on the Government’s work, Garibashvili noted 229,000 new jobs had been created between the second quarter of 2021 and the third quarter of 2022, and said unemployment was at “historic low”.

“Poverty and unemployment are our main challenges for our country and our Government. Our declared policy is to defeat poverty and reduce unemployment in the shortest possible time”, he said in his summary.

The third quarter [of 2022] was distinguished in this respect as well - the unemployment rate reached a historic minimum [...] [of] 15.6 percent. I also want to tell you that in two years, between the second quarter of 2021 and the third quarter of 2022, 229,000 new jobs were created [...] Of these, 209,000 people are employed in the private sector”, Garibashvili said.

The PM also noted his Government had launched a large-scale public employment programme to provide jobs to socially vulnerable, able-bodied citizens.

“More than 30,000 socially vulnerable people have already been employed [as part of the initiative] over the past seven months. The resource is very large - you know that 200,000 people [in the country] are socially vulnerable while able to work, and our task is to employ all these people in both the private and public sectors”, he concluded.