Economy Minister - private sector promotion, strengthening via Enterprise Georgia programme Gov’t “priority”

Georgian Economy Minister Levan Davitashvili on Wednesday said promotion and strengthening of the domestic private sector was “one of the main priorities” of the Government’s economic policy.

In his address to the Parliament, Davitashvili said Enterprise Georgia, the state agency promoting development of business environment, supporting the private sector, investment climate and exports was an “important and proven tool” for this purpose.

Davitashvili said the agency was working on “various new initiatives” for further promoting the development of small and medium-sized businesses, and noted work was “actively being done” on the development of alternative sources of financing, such as bond issuance, equity capital development and asset-based financing.

He pointed out expansion of the existing business promotion mechanisms during 2022-2023, with the changes affecting both financial and technical promotion programmes resulting in the backing of up to 1,000 projects and the creation of up to 10,000 job opportunities.

The Minister emphasised that 1,157 projects had won the micro and small entrepreneurship grant programme this year, with 50.12 percent of the winners being female entrepreneurs, and noted up to 11,000 projects had been financed and more than 65,000 jobs created within programmes of Enterprise Georgia.

Davitashvili said the concept of regional consulting centres of the body had been developed and started operation in pilot mode this year in the western Georgian region of Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti to provide business support programmes to entrepreneurs at the local level, and announced they would be opened in 10 other regions and capital Tbilisi.

He also told the legislative body “innovative approaches” had been developed and introduced within the programme to attract investors, with the efforts including hiring representative companies abroad, working with location scouts and cooperating with experts in the relevant field to presenting the country, with world's “largest and multibillion-dollar corporations” including Girteka, Concentrix, Indorama, Teleperformance and others showing interest in the country's potential and starting operations.

The Minister said the agency had developed a “new export stimulation” programme in to diversify export markets, improve positions on existing markets and improve export potential of companies, providing assistance to enterprises in certification, branding and entering of international networks, with 100 export-oriented companies already involved in the programme.

He noted the agency had conducted a certificate course for export managers, covering “all key subjects” on export basics and export operations, with the number of trained export managers exceeding 120. The official also noted a 30 percent increase in international sales with the use of supporting tools by beneficiaries of the agency.