Page 39 - GEORptApr19

9.1.4 Tourism sector news
Foreign tourists spent $164.5mn in Georgia in January, marking a fivefold increase year on year, the Georgian National Tourism Administration (GNTA) of the Ministry of Economy of Georgia announced, according to agenda.ge.
About $3.2bn was generated from tourism in Georgia in 2018. That was $498mn more compared to 2017, said the GNTA. Meanwhile, in all of 2017 international tourism revenue reached $2.7bn, which was $594mn more compared to 2016.
Some 8,679,544 international visitors arrived in Georgia during 2018, 25% more than in 2017 and a national record, Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze announced on January 4.
"This is truly a unique success for a country of our size... Visitors are learning about our country and seeing that our unique culture is part of a common European civilisation," said Bakhtadze.
Georgia is increasingly celebrated as a "newly discovered destination" in international travel media.
9.1.5 Infrastructure and construction sector news
A minister in Georgia has raised the prospect of the state taking the Anaklia Deep Sea Port project back into state ownership, citing eight demands international financial institutions (IFIs) will want met before they go ahead and finance the $2.5bn flagship infrastructure project. The move will raise further questions over how prosecutors in Georgia investigating historical lending at TBC Bank may have had an impact on the fortunes of TBC Holding—it is the lead investor in the Anaklia Development Consortium (ADC) developing the port on the country’s Black Sea coast and as soon as the lending probe began there were voices that predicted the affair could loosen its grip on the project. Analysts will now scrutinise whether there are indeed real concerns about a lack of progress with the Anaklia investment under the TBC-led ADC. Georgia has great hopes for the port, which it wants to see become an important hub within China’s massive Belt and Road modern-day infrastructure-for-trade initiative.
Georgian Minister of Regional Development and Infrastructure Maia Tskitishvili spelled out the eight IFI demands on March 21 in parliament, according to a report from Agenda.ge . She reportedly said that under the existing partnership agreement, if the agreement was terminated the port project would be returned to state ownership.
The first demand of the IFIs—which is also a provision to be complied with under the public private partnership (PPP) contract for the Anaklia port—is that the first phase of the project must be completed within three years from the start of construction, namely before November 20, 2020, Tskitishvili said. “Regrettably, as there are no finances for this project, I presume this deadline will not be met”, Tskitishvili then stated.
ADC, claimed the minister, was having problems financing the first phase of the project, which requires capital of around $600mn, even before the Prosecutor’s Office of Georgia at the end of last year revealed it was probing two owners of TBC Bank over the historical lending.
Another demand apparently centres on a project “golden share” held by the government under the PPP agreement, with banks wanting to diminish the associated rights of the government.
Tskitishvili said other IFI demands were related to the continuation of
39 GEORGIA Country Report April 2019 www.intellinews.com