2018-10-22
Let me greet you all,
I made a presentation of our vision two months ago exactly at this very place. It was related to the Green Policy and Green Economy. Fundamental cornerstone of our reforms is this very Green Economy. The vision covers a lot of areas, including agriculture, fuel standards, construction and transport of course.
Today we are announcing a new initiative and I am confident that future generations will be proud of it. Government of Georgia has come up with a plan, which envisages the substitution of 90% of our current pool of transport with electric cars in the coming decade and Georgia will thus become the first country to substitute its pool of transport with such vehicles in such a short timeframe. It is a very ambitious plan, but it will give a tremendous advantage to Georgia at the same time. It will also be a huge added value for our economy.
You may well be aware that we already gave a considerable advantage to electric cars in contrast to those of internal combustion by making the customs clearance almost zero-rated. We will gradually increase the price difference between the electric cars and conventional vehicles. At the same time we will develop the infrastructure to further accelerate and facilitate the interest of more people towards electric car imports. We will be giving a significant fiscal incentive to the development of such leasing schemes in Georgia, which will let individuals to buy electric cars by installment payments with savings generated from the low cost of fuel within five years without incurring any additional actual expenses.
Naturally, this creates a very important advantage. It means that we will give rise to a considerably large market in Georgia and with this purpose we are engaged in negotiations with two most famous brands to build an electric car manufacturing in Georgia. I wish to touch upon a very important positive factor, which I wish to particularly underline here. One of the most pressing issues in our economy is the trade deficit and current account deficit at large. Fuel leads in our imported commodity list. Largest share of our imports is indeed fuel. Therefore, shift to electric cars has a tremendous macroeconomic impact, which will enable us to accumulate more wealth in Georgia, reduce trade deficit and thereby create a very significant consumer segment for electric cars to be manufactured domestically.
I wish to hereby refer to a very important factor. It is related to the development of not only electric cars and promotion of such transport, but also to a maximum accessibility and eco-friendly and clean nature of public transport. Imports of electric cars to Georgia will start from the next week and over 2000 of them will be imported throughout the coming year via a so called Car Sharing Principle, which offers huge advantages to consumers. It will considerably reduce the traffic in our capital city and will thereby lead to a greater promotion and popularity of electric cars at the domestic market.
When we talk about public transport, it is very important to single our its main advantage, which should be introduced in Georgia and it is the culture of consumption. It is not the most important to have as many vehicles as possible in the country. But rather, we should create such comfortable public transport, which will enable our citizens to commute in a comfortable and cheap manner, thereby leading to an added value to our economy.
Many of you are well aware of the so called Bypass Railway Project. A lot has been said about it and you may recall that it was suspended during my management of the Georgian Railway Corp. It was a very objective decision as it failed to comply with any norms and standards. Moreover, it was a counter-productive project initiative and I would even call it retrograde. You will not see any city in Europe, which does not have the most green transport - railway. You will neither see any city in Europe, which does not have a central railway station. Alas, the referred project envisaged the relocation of our most green transport from downtown and creation of highways for conventional cars instead. Naturally, it is absolutely unacceptable. Besides, the project had significant engineering faults and we had international Expertise Opinions, which evidenced that completion of the project with the existing design was absolutely unacceptable. Hence, my main vision is to do what many European countries managed to achieve - to modernize the railway and integrate underground transportation with it in the most effective manner. Today we are announcing the most important project initiative and Kakhi will elaborate the details of it. We will be using the bypass railway infrastructure to build new underground stations from Samgori to Lilo. It is the most important project, which will spark additional life to our capital city.
At the same time, you may well agree that Tbilisi agglomeration is developing also and this underground line will potentially help us in reaching out to the city of Rustavi with relevant infrastructure to be linked with Tbilisi underground transportation system. This is indeed a project initiative of historic significance and I wish to once again stress that we are doing it not only because electric cars are becoming trendy and more popular internationally. Yes, their popularity grows day by day, but the idea has a special advantage for our economy: it means that more electric cars will be imported to Georgia and those of internal combustion will be substituted with greater speed to generate more wealth in the country. It also means that our citizens will own assets of greater value. It will also lead to the development of a higher sending segment in tourism of Georgia and national economy will ultimately get more capitalized.