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New wave of economic liberalisation?

By Messenger Staff
Monday, September 28
The Georgian President recently announced an initiative to create a new wave of economic liberalisation. Some analysts are skeptical about this and are commenting on it.

Soso Tsiskarishvili thinks this is another PR stunt and is doomed to failure. He says that new waves of democratic changes have been announced many times before but not yet yielded any visible results. Analyst Levan Kalandadze suggests that the terms of this new liberalisation are pretty vague. There is no clear cut programme nor conditions which must be applied, nor any structured economic policy in the country at all nor strategic plan of development. Former President of the National Bank of Georgia Nodar Javakhishvili likewise thinks that that President has not determined what he means by liberalisation, and not every aspect of liberalisation is good.

Demur Giorkhelidze, economist, thinks that for the Georgian Government liberalisation only applies to businesses run by foreigners and not Georgian citizens. Professor Nodar Khaduri however is still optimistic, suggesting that the new liberalisation should affect tax administration, market economy and private property issues. These are the preconditions for facilitating business development.