On July 26, 2011 was held the meeting of the Georgian Government. The agenda included 33 items.
Before the meeting started, the Prime Minister of Georgia, Nika Gilauri, talked about economic activities of the first half of the year 2011.
"Good day. Analyzing of the results of first six months' economic activities is under way: export, import and number of visitor.
I would like to draw your attention to the foreign trade, inflation and tourism.
We have data of six months' foreign trade. Import has grown by 36%, and export - by 44%. For the first time, the data of six months have exceeded $1 billion.
Export increased by 60% in June. This is one of the record indicators.
The European Union, Ukraine, Turkey and Azerbaijan are steel the main partners. The main export markets are in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkey.
Cars come first among export products. This is re-export but such cars amount to 23% of our export. Ferroalloys, nitrogenous fertilizers, gold, scrap iron, processed reinforcement - these are our main export products.
It should be mentioned that the fact that growth of import is higher than that of export is very important. One of the main problems of our economics is a negative balance between import and export. We hope that gradually, this negative balance will reduce. For this, a hard work is to be done, especially on the export markets.
During the current year, inflation was one of the main issues and problematic questions for the public, as well as for the private sector. It should be mentioned that the index of inflation has been reduced. Two months ago, 12 month inflation of 14.3% was observed. Last month, this figure fell to 10%. According to preliminary data of the current month, from 8.5 to 9% of inflation will be observed, that is reduced in comparison with the last month. As we assume, the same trend will continue the next month as well, reducing the index of inflation even more during August.
We have expected this. When inflation was at its peak and the population had extreme difficulties due to increase in prices, we issued different types of vouchers: vouchers for electricity and food. There was an anticipation and prediction that index of inflation shall reduce not only in Georgia, but also in the whole region and all over the world causing decrease in inflation rate in our country. So it happened. We hope that this index will reduce even more during the next months.
The last parameter, I would like to draw your attention to, is a number of visitors. Tourist season has already started. This year, number of visitors has increased by 45%, and this is a very high figure. Last year, number of visitors increased by 40%. We supposed that this number will be less this year. But the trend still continues.
Let Vera Tell us a few words about how the tourist season is going on, how many tourists we are waiting for and whether we are content with the tourist season started?"
Vera Kobalia: "for the first six months, a number of tourists have increased by 45%. Approximately 1,200,000 people have arrived; in Adjara Region occupation rate of hotels amount to 80%. When different events take place, the hotels and family hotels are occupied by 100%. In number of tourists, Citizens of Turkey come first, then those of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia and Ukraine.
Increase in number of tourists from Iran and Israel amounts to 200%. This is because directs flights have been appointed from these countries. Growth is very big from Kazakhstan as well as from China. We would like to continue our campaigns in this direction. We are expecting increase in number of tourists from these countries. I think that August and September are the most loaded months. We are waiting for the biggest flow of tourists. Till the end of the year, we suppose to host 3 million tourists.
In Adjara Region, hotels have already been occupied by 100%. New investors are able to enter Adjara as well as other regions and carry out construction of different types of hotels."
Nika Gilauri: "For the private sector, especially, in construction of hotels, percentage of loading of hotels is very important.
There has always been a great demand on Adjara Region. We predict construction of new hotels there.
In the past years, this index was low in Tbilisi. We suppose that loading of hotels will amount to more than 70% this year. This will be an additional incentive for the private sector to construct new hotels in Tbilisi. In the next years, we suppose to construct many 3-, 4-, 5-star hotels in Tbilisi."
Prime Minister's Press Servic