Georgia to select new potential investor for Anaklia Deep Sea Port Project
By Veronika Malinboym
Friday, March 5
On March 4, newly appointed Prime Minister of Georgia Irakli Garibashvili announced that the government will start selecting a new investor for the Anaklia Deep Sea Port Project soon.
The PM explained that the government decided on canceling the agreement it had with the Anaklia Development Consortium, which won the government-issued tender to build the deep-sea port.
Garibashvili noted that the government handed over a land worth 58 million GEL to the investor, and agreed to fulfill an obligation of constructing the necessary transportation and railway routes. It will also offer 100 million USD subordinated loan to the investor once they are able to fulfill the terms of the agreement they had with the government.
The Anaklia State Consortium won a tender and signed a deal to begin the construction of the Anaklia deep-sea port in 2016, having TBC Holding as its main partner. The Consortium later faced problems with acquiring the required 2.5 billion USD which was necessary to construct the port. The deadline for obtaining the funds has been postponed six times, and, in January last year, the Georgian government announced that it terminates the agreement it had with Anaklia State Consortium due to the latter’s inability to collect the required 400 million USD in loans from the international financial institutions and 120 million USD from the potential investors before the expiration of the official deadline which was set at the end of 2019.
The Anaklia State Consortium later responded by claiming that the government, instead of helping the project, allegedly sabotaged it. Following the government’s decision to terminate the investment agreement with the Consortium, co-founder of the TBC Bank, Mamuka Khazaradze, announced that the Consortium would take the case to the International Court of Justice. He added that in presenting the case, the Consortium would expose all the politicians, who, according to him, were responsible for 'sabotaging' the project, including the founder and the former chairman of the ruling Georgian Dream party Bidzina Ivanishvili, former PM Giorgi Gakharia and the former Minister of Infrastructure Maia Tskitishvili.
The construction of the Anaklia Deep Sea Port began in 2017.
