Georgian Agriculture Minister Otar Shamugia on Tuesday highlighted the World Wine Trade Group, an organisation aiming to facilitate wine trade and promote international information-sharing and joint actions to remove trade barriers, as a “good platform” for “promoting and raising awareness” of Georgian wine.
The Ministry of Agriculture said Shamugia emphasised the state of the country’s wine industry and the importance of Georgia's membership in the WWTG at the opening event of the WWTG’s annual meeting, hosted in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi.
He also noted the Ministry was working together with members of the Group to improve wine trade between countries and implement joint measures over trade barriers.
He also mentioned Georgia’s status as the Chair of the WWTG, for the second time since 2014, and noted he was “certain” the tenure of the country in the status - which he called “important” for the domestic wine industry to further “strengthen its position” in the international market - would be “successful”.
The Ministry said the meeting also featured representatives from the WWTG’s member countries from the United States, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, New Zealand and South Africa, along with Levan Mekhuzla, the Chair of the National Wine Agency of Georgia, Iuri Nozadze, the Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection and Agriculture and Tina Kezel, the Executive Director of Association Georgian Wine.
The participants will discuss issues related to wine trade, including trade agreements between governments, regulatory documents, coordination with the Organisation, as well as sanitary and phytosanitary norms, labelling, product packaging, agrochemical preparations and other issues related to the facilitation of wine trade between countries.
Georgia became the chair of WWTG at the annual WWTG meeting in Brussels in March, with the US handing the position over to the country for a year.