PM addresses Sustainable Development at UNGA session
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Monday, September 28
The Prime Minister of Georgia, Irakli Garibashvili, delivered a speech at the Post-2015 United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Summit (SDS) 2015 in New York on September 26 in the frames of the 70th Assembly of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
In his address, the PM touched upon the importance of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of the United Nations mainly addressing the extreme poverty problem worldwide and the significance of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offered by the UN.
The PM emphasised those goals of the SDG in which Georgia has already provided serious advancement and was ready to successfully continue them.
The 17 goals within SDG cover all the aspects and problems of human life starting from poverty and health-related issues ending with gender-equality problems.
Georgia’s Prime Minister stressed that Georgia was especially successful in fulfilling four goals out of the total seventeen.
In particular the goals concerned ensuring a healthy-life; ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all; building resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation and strengthening the means of implementation and revitalisation the global partnership for sustainable development.
Speaking in detail, the PM stressed that Georgia has declared an unprecedented combat with Hepatitis C.
“Patients are provided with the necessary tests for pre-diagnostic and treatment monitoring purposes and the latest drugs for the treatment of hepatitis C, “ Garibashvili said.
When it came to the importance of ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy the PM stressed that over the last decade, Georgia’s electricity sector has undergone major changes with a view of creating an open, liberal and commercially viable energy sector, resistant to market fluctuations.
“Due to our intensive reforms, our power sector has been a net electricity exporter since 2007,” the PM said.
“Georgia, with its unique location, creates many opportunities for energy transit. The “Association Agreement” (AA) signed with the EU paves the way for Georgia to become fully fledged member of The Energy Community and finalize the negotiations by September, 2016,” Garibashvili added.
Moving on to industrialisation and innovation goals, Garibashvili underscored that the current Government of Georgia was focused on supporting of small and medium-sized businesses.
“We have implemented projects aimed at creating new jobs in rural areas, improving efficiency of land use and land consolidation, and increasing the export potential of agricultural products,” Garibashvili said.
In his final note, the PM spoke about the importance of access to justice and effective, accountable and inclusive institutions. He stressed that transparency, access to public information, and the integrity of public institutions were the most important principles for the effective work of the government.
“In Georgia we are developing the consolidated legislation that will bring together the fragmented regulations introducing new standards of freedom of information, based on the principle of openness,” he said.
The PM emphasized that the goals also concerned the people living in Georgia’s occupied regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali (South Ossetia).
“We know how urgent it is to address their needs,” Garibashvili said, noting that sustainable development was the pathway to the future that Georgia wanted for all.
Prime Minister left for New-York on September 25 and is due to stay there until October 3.
