The Meeting of the Government of Georgia was held on 16 October 2008. The agenda consisted of 33 items.
Before the commencement of the Meeting, the Prime Minister of Georgia discussed the details of his US (Washington and New-York) visit.
Vladimer Gurgenidze said that very important meetings had been held with the American Government. "Judging the current state of affairs, by the end of October all the agreements will have been singed and all the procedures will have been completed to let the American aid come into Georgia. Our sincere appreciations go to the US Treasury and all other agencies that are actively involved in the process. Despite millions of problems or concerns that have befallen upon them, they have not forgotten Georgia.
We had meetings with World Bank President Peter Samneb and his colleagues. As always, World Bank is ready to cooperate with the Government of Georgia. After the donors' conference that is scheduled for 22 October, we'll move on to discuss in detail the projects that World Bank will finance in Georgia. With World Bank, priorities include infrastructure, roads, etc. It's about a variety of projects of several hundreds of millions of dollars for the next 2-3 years.
We also met with the management of International Financial Corporation and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Both of these institutions have become more active and overall, we discussed the investments worth $400-500 million. Specific projects are discussed to finance Georgian companies, Georgian banks. By the end of the year, we may expect approximately $200 million to come into Georgia in investments.
The situation is similar with OPEC. OPEC is similar to the US Government, as it considers $150 million investment projects. We had meetings in International Monetary Fund. IMF is very busy due to the world financial crisis that the leading nations have successfully coped with. Unfortunately, some small countries, including Iceland, were caught unprepared to face the global challenge. We finished our project with IMF in September, securing a $750 mln program. Other countries have just started similar works.
The decision to allocate $100 million under the Millennium Project has already been made. These projects will be launched from February.
Now we are working in full swing, making preparations for the donors' conference. We want to make sure that the donors' conference goes with a bang and draws as many countries as possible," Vladimer Gurgenidze pointed out.
The Prime Minister of Georgia thanked all the agencies and lawyers contributing to Georgia's winning the Hague proceeding against the Russian occupation. The comments in this respect were expressed by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Justice.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Ekaterine Tkeshelashvili: "it is very important that Russia was found an occupying force in the territories that she holds, I mean South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Considering the control that she exercises in these regions, she is under unconditional obligation in terms of human rights. This is a very important success of our legal services."
Minister of Justice Nika Gvaramia: "this is a success of the Government of Georgia. The Ministry of Justice, the Ministries of Foreign and Internal Affairs, the Office of the Prosecutor and other agencies worked on the issue. Much remains to be done in future. However, I'd like to assure you that the work that had been done to a T preconditioned the success. Ultimately, this is Georgia's victory. The victory came because the truth is on our side. It proved very difficult to achieve the victory by 7 versus 8 votes. It is worth mentioning that we had not had such high expectation of the judgement."
Press Center of the Chancellery of the Government of Georgia