Foreign investments in Georgia

The Rose Revolution of 6 years ago provoked the active inflow of investments into Georgia. The country became very popular with investors due to certain favourable steps taken to attract them. These included decreasing the taxation burden and simplifying the issuing of licenses, permissions and different documents and registering property, all simple but very essential rules and regulations.

In 2004 foreign direct investments (FDI) reached almost USD half a billion, in 2005 it was approximately the same. In 2006, FDI reached over USD 1 billion, in 2007 it was over USD 2 billion. In 2008 the tendency was initially encouraging, but the Russian aggression slowed down investments. Georgia received only USD 1.5 billion. In 2009, around USD 900 million in FDI was budgeted for but so far much less than that has arrived.

Recently there has been a renewed inflow of money into Georgia, mostly from Arab countries rather than European ones. One of the leaders of public movement Ratom? (Why?), Luka Tsuladze, thinks that the authorities are giving certain advantages to them which contravene the principles of the free market.