Noghaideli apocalyptic

Former PM Zurab Noghaideli, now leader of the opposition Movement For Fair Georgia, is criticising the Saakashvili Government's economic policy and painting an apocalyptic picture of economic catastrophe. Noghaideli considers the budget cuts of 2009 tragic and the decrease of GDP very negative.

Noghaideli criticised the Government's economic policy by using President Saakashvili’s beloved expression, “for the first time in Georgia’s history”. He stated that in 2009 for the first time in Georgia’s history since 1994 jobs were lost and for the first time since 1999 poverty levels have increased. Georgia has seen its biggest emigration since 2006.

Noghaideli thinks that the collapse of the Georgian economy is the result of wrongdoing by the current administration. However Government members have reminded him that he was Minister of Finance during the Shevardnadze regime, when cutting the budget was an annual tradition. Therefore the polemics continue.