Top French Eiffage becomes a key contractor to build Anaklia Port
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Thursday, July 25
The consortium says that Eiffage, who has completed more than 100,000 projects worldwide since its establishment in 1844, was selected via a tender to get involved in the 2.5 billion USD project.
Anaklia Development Consortium (ADC) consists of specialized firms with diverse backgrounds, which together form a global business leadership team that will work with the government of Georgia to construct the port.
ADC includes TBC Holding from Georgia, Conti International from the United States, SSA Marine from the United States, British Wondernet Express working in Central Asia, and G-Star Ltd. from Bulgaria.
TBC Bank founder Mamuka Khazaradze, who represents TBC holding in the project, wrote on Wednesday that “we will build the port anyway.”
Information on entering the French company matched with charging Khazaradze and another founder of the bank Badri Japaridze with the laundering of 16.7 million USD in 2007-2008.
Khazaradze says that the charge is related to the port project, as some top figures in the government oppose the construction, “which will make Georgia more attractive, even for NATO.”
Member of the United National Movement Roman Gotsiridze said that “Russia and Ivanishvili [founder of the Georgian Dream ruling party] oppose the project, as Russia dislikes it.”
Economy Minister Natia Turnava dismissed the allegations, saying that the Anaklia port is “of the highest importance for the government,” and the case is a separate issue.
Anaklia Deep Sea Port will be the first Georgian container port with deep water, state-of-the-art infrastructure, and equipment.
After two years of discussions, the Georgian government selected the Anaklia Development Consortium in 2016 ahead of six other local and international companies to develop the mixed-cargo port on a build, operate and transfer basis.
“Set to open in 2020, Anaklia Deep Sea Port will be designed throughout 9 phases, with an aggregate investment of $2.5 billion. Anaklia Port’s depth will be 16 meters which enables to place vessels up to 10,000 TEUs capacity,” the Anaklia Consortium states.
Georgian government members, the Anaklia Development Consortium and international finance organisations (EBRD, OPIC, ADB, AIIB) held a meeting in May to discuss the details of the project.
The meeting discussed the eight demands that international financial institutions requested to be fulfilled to further invest [400 million USD] in the project.
The proposed changes include insurance of commercial risks of an investor, regulation of development phases of the port, and reimbursement of damage generated by legislative amendments.
The only unsettled issue is securing of commercial risks.
The Georgian government has provided 330 ha of land and 225 ha of marine area for the port.