The Meeting of the Government of Georgia was held on 30 March 2006. The Agenda consisted of 38 items.
At the beginning of the Meeting, Prime Minister of Georgia Zurab Noghaideli informed the audience as follows: today, we'll start the Meeting by considering an unexpectedly, unfairly and illegally created problem related to the prohibition of the Georgian wines on the Russian market. In line with the instruction from the President of Georgia, the work on the matter has already started. Our objectives are: firstly, restore the normal situation on the Russian market, secondly - to speed up, as much as possible, the intensive process of growing the volume of export of the Georgian wines to the markets of other markets, and thirdly - addressing, as soon as possible, all the problems pertaining to the winegrowing and winemaking sectors. First of all, this concerns the Ministry of Agriculture.
The Prime Minister of Georgia said that one of the main issues discussed with the Government of Austria during his recent visit to Austria was the opportunity to kick start the process towards signing a free trade agreement with the European Union. On that issue, they were conducting negotiations with the European Commission within the framework of European Neighbourhood Policy Action Plan. It was their goal to maximally intensify those relations, negotiations on that stage exactly, against the background of that problem, though the process had been quite intensive.
The Prime Minister of Georgia informed the audience that at 12:00 yesterday night, the Enguri HPP had had to be switched off to conduct repairs. He asked Minister of Energy of Georgia Nika Gilauri to report to the members of the Government of Georgia on the situation.
Minister of Energy of Georgia Nika Gilauri informed the members of the Government as follows: we started electricity import by means of Kavkasioni and Salkhino power transmission lines from 10 p.m. yesterday. Yesterday, we started importing additional 70 megawatt electricity from Turkey. Electricity is coming in from Armenia, too. In such situation, we switched off the Enguri HPP at 12 o'clock last night. The diversion channel is being emptied now and will continue for 3-4 days. We have no problems in terms of power supply. Power Units 9 and 4 of the heat power plant are operating now and in parallel we are importing electricity through the PTLs and countries already mentioned. Besides, we have a 200-megawatt standby capacity through Kavkasioni PTL, plus Azerbaijani PTL, and also Power Unit 3 in standby mode that is ready for operation, should any problem arise.
Press Center of the Chancellery of the Government of Georgia