On November 16, at the chancellery of the government, the President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili presented Vladimer Gurgenidze as the new prime minister of Georgia.
The president of Georgia announced that in a few hours he is going to present before the parliament the candidature of Vladimer Gurgenidze (former director general of the Bank of Georgia) on the post of the prime minister and he expressed the hope that after several days, the parliament will endorse the candidate on this post. Mikheil Saakashvili estimated Zurab Noghaideli's activities as being successful. He noted that the reforms that have already been started should continue in a more active pace and this will need more efficient efforts to be implemented.
The president assigned the candidate to the post of the prime minister the task of gradual doubling of the pensions, considerable increase of teachers' salaries and enhancing the social aid in general as well as broadening of the employment program. According to Mikheil Saakashvili's words, it is up to Vladimer Gurgenidze to bring the results of the reforms down to each citizen. "It is of great significance for our reforms to gain more force which will enable us to increase the pace of building and developing our country", - Mikheil Saakashvili asserted.
The president underlined that "Our success will be faster because a lot of people have pinned their hopes to us. Yet quite strong forces are interested in throwing the successful democratic experiment that took place in Georgia into the swamp of failure, but no one is destined to witness that - we have already demonstrated before the rest of the world our desire and we'll follow the same route in future as well. We are going to have a new prime minister, which means that we are acquiring new energy, new force and a serious stimulus. Vladimer Gurgeenidze is one of the most successful modern Georgian businessmen with western education which he practiced in England, the USA and other countries and consequently, has accumulated vast working experience. In fact, he managed to revive practically dead banking sector and he was the first who introduced the Georgian stocks to the London Stock Exchange", - Mikheil Saakashvili stated and added that Georgia is just thirsting for such a successful manager with such impressive experience.
After the presentation, Vladimer Gurgenidze stated that it is a great privilege to him: "I appreciate this appointment and attach great responsibility to it. I believe that the message of "their highness the people" should be heard by all means. The message implies that first of all, the priority has to be given to the social programs and it should constitute the foundation of the reforms, which will be accomplished in case the parliament endorses my candidature.
In addition, accents will be shifted on employment and creation of new jobs; if the parliament endorses my appointment, my primary task will be to set the communication and launch the dialogue in order to achieve the consensus among the vulnerable layers of our population as well as among three major groups of our society. The economic might, development and progress that our country has achieved during the last 4 years are based on these three groups which were managed through the efforts of the president of Georgia and Zurab Noghaideli's government.
The very first among the three groups mentioned above is the Georgian business. Georgian business has clearly formulated its interest in maintaining hereditary character of the economic course; this is what I regard as a precondition for further progress, bigger investment flow and consequently, for creating more jobs in the country.
The second group represents two major sources of our investments: the foreign investors, with whom I have had a long term working experience and by the way, rather successful too. Therefore, in order to continue creation of new jobs and achieve economic progress in Georgia, we have to broaden communication with the mentioned group and elevate it to a considerably higher level. Apart from this, we have to keep in mind another source of investments as well and that is the Georgian Diaspora, which consists of about million people who tend to be more and more interested in investing in Georgia. I have tight connections with this group because as you might know, I was away from Georgia for 14 years, while studying and working in the USA, England, Russia, Poland etc.
This is how I imagine the major challenges that I am going to face", - Vladimer Gurgenidze stated.
The press center of the Chancellery of the Government of Georgia