2021-12-20
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Prime Ministers of Georgia and Armenia chaired a meeting of the Inter-Governmental Economic Cooperation Commission at the Government Administration today.
Meeting was launched by Irakli Garibashvili and Nikol Pashinian. The Head of Government of Georgia thanked his Armenian colleague for the visit to Georgia and focused on the close cooperation between the two countries.
"Let me greet and welcome you the Prime Minister and esteemed delegation members! Dear guests, it is my great honour to host you in Georgia.
I greet my friend - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian - in Tbilisi! This is your second visit to Georgia within this capacity and I am thrilled that I have paid two Official Visits to Yerevan myself. Let me note with pleasure and satisfaction that it truly demonstrates a close relationship, cooperation and kind attitude between us and I wish to thank you for this approach and mindset.
I wish to also thank you for the Inter-Governmental Economic Cooperation Commission, which is held today at our - Prime Ministerial - level with our initiative and agreement. I also thank you for resuming the operation of this Commission with your personal engagement, of course. It had not been held for years and I wish to say that we are interested in converting the very close, friendly cooperation between us into real work, of course. We should closely develop our trade and economic relations, discuss our regional projects, infrastructure and other initiatives that will be mutually interesting for both countries. That is why, we have gathered today and I wish to also say that our relationship has peaked indeed.
It needs to be said with pride and pleasure that such a relationship has not existed between our countries. Of course, Armenia and Georgia always had very close and friendly relations, but it needs to be said that no misunderstanding exists between our governments and countries, great merits to us. We truly have ideal relations.
We are interested in having peace and stability in the region. Georgia has always been motivated to play one of the vital roles in this process and that is why I voiced the Peaceful Neighbourhood Initiative. I wish to confirm Mr. Prime Minister that we always stand ready to contribute and participate in advancing the pan-regional peace and stability" stated Irakli Garibashvili, Prime Minister of Georgia.
The Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia expressed gratitude to the Head of Government of Georgia for hosting the visiting delegation at a high level.
"Most Honourable Prime Minister, Dear Irakli! Respected participants of the meeting! Ladies and Gentlemen! I cordially greet Irakli Garibashvili, Prime Minister of Georgia and participants of the 11th meeting of the Inter-Governmental Economic Cooperation Commission. First of all, I wish to thank our Georgian colleagues for a traditionally warm welcome.
I wish to express my satisfaction towards advancing the relations between our countries to a completely new level and success achieved in various areas, irrespective of the difficulties.
We defined an ambitious agenda with Georgia in 2019 and aimed for mutual trade volumes to increase to 1 billion USD. Global pandemic has hampered this process, however as we are learning how to exist in parallel with COVID-19, I wish to propose a continued work to attain our goal in every direction to ultimately reach 1 billion USD in the trade volumes between our countries. It is true that we have this proposal, but we need to note that it is a very ambitious task and I wish to highlight that this indicator for the first 10 months of the current year has already exceeded the annual indicator of the previous 3 years. Nevertheless, we are still far from 1 billion USD. The Inter-Governmental Economic Cooperation Commission has created the best condition for this as it is chaired by government leaders of the two countries today. This is also unprecedented. This meeting of the Inter-Governmental Commission should have been held last year, which did not happen due to the pandemic. However, our bilateral relations both at our level as well as within the sectoral competencies were led in a dynamic manner. Our current bilateral agenda covers many directions, while friendly relations between our two countries facilitate the maintained security and stability in our region, the significance of which has already been highlighted by the Prime Minister of Georgia.
Clear directions have been defined in the trade and economic cooperation between Georgia and Armenia, which covers transport and energy, advanced technologies, tourism and other areas. One of the pre-conditions of economic development between Georgia and Armenia is mutual trust, which is based on the historic friendship between our people. I wish to stress the human and emotional side of our relationship. It implies not only my interaction with Mr. Garibashvili, but cooperation between our governments. Our nations live side by side in a friendly manner and it happens not because our governments have official, but human relationships. We need to deepen this trust. Meetings of Armenian and Georgian leaders are periodic. We have an opportunity to discuss many areas of our interaction. This year we have met four times with the Prime Minister of Georgia. Such development had not been observed between our countries and it serves as a basis for defining a new level of our economic relationship to further advance the traditional level of our interaction. Once again I wish to express gratitude to the Government of Georgia for welcoming the Armenian delegation at a high level" noted Nikol Pashinyan, Prime Minister of Armenia.
Meeting of the Inter-Governmental Economic Cooperation Commission was followed by the signing of the 11th Protocol of the Commission on the Economic Cooperation between Georgia and Republic of Armenia by the Prime Ministers of both countries.
Meeting of the Commission engaged the government members of Georgia and Armenia, with representatives of respective public institutions.
Press Service of the Government Administration