The meeting of the Government of Georgia was held on September 28, 2010. The agenda consisted of 51 items.
Before the commencement of the Meeting, Prime Minister of Georgia Nika Gilauri talked about the current vintage in Georgia. Here's the speech of the Prime Minister:
"Before we start the Meeting, I'd like to ask Bakur to provide the Government members and the society with the information on the process of vintage in Kakheti and Racha.
I'd like to note and highlight that during the past years September, the vintage period, was the hardest month from economical, political and to some extent, social point of view. For the last 2 years we have almost settled these problems as the Ministry of Agriculture has become more ready for the said period and vintage. Accordingly, I'd like to give my thanks to Bakur.
It's important that we managed to increase the wine export to Europe and the whole world as well. It caused the increase of demand for grapes.
We have other new plans with regard to the wine export. As compared to the last year the wine export has been already increased by 25%, the number of the countries, we make export to, has also been increased.
We're trying to attract new countries. This is very important to solve the vintage problem in Georgia once and for all, create a strong market with great demand for grapes. There is strong demand for the Georgian wine all over the world.
This is the goal we have been trying to realize for the last two years. We've managed to reach the goal and therefore, have respective results - the vintage problem has been solved.
I'd like to highlight one more problem, the Turkish market. We've signed a Free Trade Agreement with Turkey. According to the Agreement we can export one million liter wine to Turkey without charging any customs fee. It's worth noting that the customs fee rate on wine in Turkey is very high. For all that, we only use 40-50 thousand, maximum 60 thousand liter wine quota. This figure is very small.
With regard to the issue I'd like to assign you, Bakur, to meet the Turkish colleague - the Trade Minister in the near future and do your best to develop and open the market as much as possible.
According to the Agreement we can put much more wine on the market. The demand is especially conditioned by the fact that at the Turkish summer resorts there are many holidaymakers from the post Soviet countries and in such case no additional advertizing campaign is needed.
You have to set a new goal to develop the Turkish market as much as possible, make the advertizing campaign more active and increase the wine export to the USA."
Press Office of the Prime Minister