On December 11, at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel the Prime Minister of Georgia Lado Gurgenidze had a meeting with the representatives of the banks. The Minister of Finance Nika Gilauri and the State Minister on Reform Coordination Kakha Bendukidze participated in the meeting. The topic of the discussion touched upon the initiative envisaging allocation of inexpensive credit resources to the enterprisers. On this, the state minister stated the following: The loud announcement of this initiative was prompted by the wish of helping (within the affordable limits) the real sector of economy. The aim is to increase the employment rate and enhance the activities of those persons who have the ambition, interest, zest and even recklessness of a gambler to start a private business. New companies have been established in Georgia in recent years and we will not spare efforts to support and stimulate this process further, because increasing the number of small scale businesses and the growing strata of individual enterprisers will result in progress of economics, in improving the social background and of course in creating more jobs throughout the country. The export direction has also to be taken in view and this issue has been the topic of wide discussions lately, because this is one of the most painful and problematic challenges for our economics.
The fact that we have assembled here is an extra proof that together with you, under your administration and our monitoring (of the National Bank), by joining our efforts we'll manage to create additional credit resources with certain allowances in order to stimulate export from our country. These are the main components of the program that we are going to discuss together.
It should be emphasized that participation in the program is absolutely voluntary and I hope that, many banks will express the wish of taking part at least in one of its aspects of this project. Perhaps some of the banks will show interest in the problems related to establishing new enterprises and in allocation of additional inexpensive resources in the sector in question, yet the clients of certain banks proved to be more orientated towards export directions. We still have ideas in store and one of the components is focused on the depressive regions; we would welcome the banks willing to spread activities in the mentioned regions.
We hope that our meetings will take place not only once and by the end of the month we'll manage to draft concrete contours of this program, so that later in winter or in early spring it will yield its first real results.
The press center of the Chancellery of the Government of Georgia