MINISTRY OF ECONOMY
AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
OF GEORGIA

“Enterprise Georgia is a very important program functioning since 2014 and it has already proved to be a strong tool that the State through the Ministry of Economy uses to support business, including the SMEs,” – Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia, Natia Turnava stated at the presentation held by the Enterprise Georgia Agency offering the annual report and future plans.  

The presentation was held at the enterprise “Meama”, which is one of the  beneficiary company of Agency. Representatives of the Parliament, the Government, diplomatic corps, business and non-governmental sector attended the presentation.

Natia Turnava spoke in details about the plans and priorities that the program will focus on in 2020. According to the Minister, several new directions were identified, including tourism services, fisheries, development of ceramics production.

“The year of 2019, as a whole, was positive for the Georgian economy, despite internal or external challenges and problems, the economy grew at a faster pace than expected and Georgia is ahead of the countries in the region. Especially positive was the export, which also grew at a high pace, and the beneficiaries of the Enterprise Georgia program contributed to this growth as well – those are the enterprises that were able to launch the program, export products or offer them to the local market,” – Natia Turnava noted. 

After the Minister’s welcoming speech, Mikheil Khidureli, the Head of the Agency made a presentation on the Agency’s activities and future plans. He said that in 2019, the Enterprise Georgia program supported about 350 different businesses including small hotels that needed help after the June 20 events. In 2019, the number of enterprises supported within the project is three times higher compared to the same number of 2018.

As for the film industry, 13 international projects were funded under the program Film in Georgia component of the Program in 2019, with a total of 55,7 million GEL spent in the country.

As part of the Export Promotion component, in 2019, 120 Georgian companies have been able to participate in 16 international exhibitions with the support of the Agency. Within the same direction, 65 export managers were retrained.

It is noteworthy that within the Agency’s third direction - with the support of the Investment Attraction Department - in 2019, 5 international projects entered the country, with a total investment of 83 million USD, which resulted in 850 new jobs.