Is land cultivation enough?

Several days ago, the prime minister stated that “to our shame, 50% of our population lives in poverty.”

He also stressed that land in Georgia must not remain uncultivated.

“We must not let our resources go unused. We have studied all the potential of Georgia’s regions and saw that this can be achieved.

“We can start to implement projects together with enterprises. Produce in Georgia and cheap Agro-Credit programs provided by the state are everything an entrepreneur could ask for: Within their framework, one has to pay only 1-2% of a loan, as we cover 10% of it,” PM Irakli Gharibashvili said.

The PM added that these programs are very significant and entrepreneurs should become more active now.

According to him, our economic situation needs to be improved through joint efforts.

“We have no right to remain in the condition we are in now. Unfortunately, 50% of our population lives in poverty,” Irakli Gharibashvili said.

He also promised several components will be added to the programs he mentioned for their further development.

Of course it is fine when our lands are cultivated and that people are engaged with agricultural work.

However, the second very important factor is motivation.

When an entrepreneur puts all his efforts in his job, he also wants to see an outcome, he wants to sell his products and have an adequate income.

Currently we can either send our products to the Russian market that is really huge without many demands or to Europe. However, the latter is harder as one has to meet various standards.

On the other hand, the Russian market is not stable and in the case of some controversies it might close for us as it happened prior to the Russian-Georgian War in 2008.

Herewith sometimes, we have a certain product in much quantity and we still import the product. The same imported product is often cheaper that sinks the local production.

Thus, all in all, only cultivation does not work, one should have some guarantees that he will sell his products on a certain market quite successfully. The government should work on market diversification issues and at the same time regulate import-export procedures and rules.