On 3-4 May, Prime Minister of Georgia Zurab Noghaideli was on a working visit to Great Britain.
As part of the visit, the Prime Minister held meetings with major companies to brief the foreign businessmen on the opportunities to invest in the energy and communication spheres in Georgia.
Zurab Noghaideli met Brews George, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Group for Georgia, a member of the British House of Commons.
The Prime Minister of Georgia started the second day of his visit with Jean Lemierre, the President of European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. At the meeting, it was disclosed that EBRD is interested in taking part in the main gas pipeline rehabilitation and is also considering investments in the processing industry.
Zurab Noghaideli took part in Georgia-British Business Forum "Investing in Georgia" organized by the Government of Georgia and Financial Times.
Together with the Prime Minister, the following officials took part in the forum: State Minister for Coordination of Reforms Kakha Bendukidze, Minister of Energy Nika Gilauri, and Minister of Economic development Irakli Chogovadze.
As Zurab Noghaideli said, if in the last year the Government of Georgia was concentrated on privatization of telecommunications, transport and energy sectors, now the efforts must be ratcheted up to promote the investment potential of Georgia. The conference of today must set the new stage for attracting investments to Georgia. It will be very important to attract investments to the agrarian sector and, therefore, the area will be in the limelight in the nearest future.
When delivering a speech at the business forum, the Prime Minister touched upon the issue of wine as well, pointing out that Russia had made an unfriendly and, more importantly, unjust decision, banning Georgian wines from the Russian market. It also became known that at the end of May London's Wine Museum would host an EBRD-organized exhibition of Georgian wines, in which the Prime Minister as well as the representatives of the Georgian wine sector will take part.
Another question that became known after the meeting that Zurab Noghaideli had as part of his visit to Great Britain with Eastwind Maritime Inc., a US company, is that the Board of Directors of the company had decided to take an active part in the tender for transfer of Batumi Seaport for management. As the representatives of the company said, the decision was to a certain extent preconditioned with the fact that the American company is pretty satisfied with the privatization of Batumi Navigation that took place last year.
At the end of the visit, the Prime Minister of Georgia held a general meeting with the representatives of British Petroleum (BP), a British oil company.
Prime Minister's Press Service