Waiting for investments

Georgia’s official inward investment projection for 2009 looks likely to be frustrated. Initially this was set at USD 1.7 billion, then adjusted to USD 1.1 billion.

Analysts say that the adjustment indicates that state officials have started assessing reality more adequately. They suggest that this figure might also be decreased later on, as we are almost halfway through 2009 and the investment boom promised by ministers at the beginning of the year has not occurred.

It was announced a few months ago that Egyptian company Fresh was going to invest USD 1.2 billion in Georgia and give jobs to 2,000 people. Georgian analysts and media outlets have been curious about how this company is going to do this since they discovered that in 2008 it invested only USD 50 million and its annual turnover is only USD 90 million. Only 2500 people are employed in its enterprises in Egypt, the newspaper Rezonansi states.

No multi million investments have been made in Georgia so far this year. The Government blames the world economic crisis and internal political instability for this. The Minister of Finance has said that investors want to put their money in a place where they find favourable conditions, and where there is no stability they don’t invest.