Middle class has suffered the most

The August war and world financial crisis have already disturbed the Georgian economy quite considerably. The group most vulnerable to this disturbance has been the middle class, which was the most active group financially and operated to a large extent on bank credits. Due to increasing interest rates and the high risks of loans it has suffered most of all.

The poorer layers of the population had no access to bank credits. The banks for their part encouraged middle class people to take out loans, issuing credits to people with medium and high incomes. In many cases certain banks took high risks while issuing credits.

Creditinfo Georgia says that in 2004 there were around 30,000 entities which could not pay back their loans, in 2008 there are already more than 30,000.