Tuesday, August 7, 2007, #149 (1416)

Good prospects for great harvest may be bad news

Deputy Minister of Agriculture Alexandre Tsintsadze announced that Georgia will harvest 200 000 tons of grapes this year. Last year, vineyards produced 130 000 tons. Good weather and 3 000 hectares of new vineyards are to thank for the bumper harvest, writes the newspaper Basta.

However, farmers worry whether they'll find buyers for all their grapes. The loss of the Russian wine market has severely cut domestic demand for grapes-last harvest, the government stepped in to push winemakers to buy up surplus grapes.

Georgian authorities have vigorously tried to promote Georgian wine elsewhere, and exports to Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus have increased. But this hasn't fully compensated for the loss of Russia's market, which accounted for 90 percent of Georgia's wine exports in 2005-about USD 54 million-according to Radio Free Europe.

Although in a difficult position, Georgian officials want to avoid offering concessions to Russia for regaining access to their market. Minister for Economic Development Giorgi Arveladze says that Moscow's decision to close the wine market was a unilateral act and so the decision to reverse it must also be unilaterally made by Moscow. Georgia has clearly demonstrated its economy could function without the Russian market, the newspaper Rezonansi reports him as saying.


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