MP warns of meddling foreign advisers in business development

The post-Rose Revolution administration has made much-publicized efforts to boost small and medium sized business enterprise development, cutting bureaucratic red tape and reducing the number of taxes in an effort to tackle Georgia’s unemployment problem.

While Statistics Department figures show that this sector was still small in the last quarter of 2007—with a turnover of GEL 412.8 million and employing some 72 000 Georgians—the effects of initiatives such as the long-term, low-interest ‘cheap credit bank’ have yet to be measured.

However, Industrialist Party leader Gogi Topadze says that outside influences, such as the IMF, have misled the government.

“Foreign ‘advisers’ tell us to be service-oriented, to open restaurants and hotels. But none of the laws adopted so far will help development [of small and medium businesses],” the newspaper Rezonansi quoted Topadze as saying.

While certain steps have been taken to assist in the development of small and medium businesses, the MP continues, they should become more wide-scale. “Although I’m sure that foreign ‘advisers’ will do their best to make sure enterprises don’t develop in Georgia,” he adds.