Page 35 - GEORptSep18

eight Georgian regions. As of 2017 its loan portfolio amounted to around GEL150mn.
It offers a range of financial services to micro, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), loans to the agricultural sector, housing and consumption loans, as well as currency exchange services, remittance handling and other financial services such as utility payments.
9.0 Industry & Sectors 9.1 Sector news
9.1.1 Oil & gas sector news
Azerbaijan on July 1 celebrated the launch by BP and partners of the $28bn Shah Deniz 2 gas field development. Gas from Shah Deniz 2 is to be exported through three interconnected pipelines that will make up the $40bn and 3,500-km SGC stretching to Melendugno in southeast Italy.
The gas is to transit along an already completed extension of the 700-km South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) to reach Turkey via Georgia. It then enters the 1,850-km and $8bn Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), launched on June 12 , and traverses Turkey to flow to Greece. From there, the 878-km Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP)—to run from Greece to Albania and then onwards to Italy via an undersea route—forms the last leg of the SGC.
TAP is still under construction, but BP says it should be operational in time to make commercial deliveries of Shah Deniz 2 gas to western Europe a reality by 2020. TAP was said to be two-thirds complete in February.
If targets are fulfilled the SGC could be delivering around 4% of the European bloc’s gas supplies by the early 2020s and, after capacity expansions, could add several more percentage points to that share in subsequent years.
There is some hope that if the political environment makes it possible in the future, some gas from Turkmenistan, Iran and Iraq could be brought to Europe via the SGC.
At plateau, Shah Deniz 2 is expected to produce 16bn cubic metres (bcm) of gas per year incrementally to current Shah Deniz 1 production. Together with output from the first phase of development, total production from the Shah Deniz field will be up to 26 bcm of gas and up to 120,000 barrels of condensate a day. The Turkish market is to buy 6 bcm of the Shah Deniz gas per year.
However, the SGC is dwarfed by Nord Stream 2, a Gazprom initiative that will double Russia’s export capacity to Europe to 110 bcm. That pipeline is welcomed by much of German industry, which wants as much cheap gas as possible.
9.1.2 Automotive sector news
Tbilisi mayor Kakha Kaladze argued on July 3 that Georgia should introduce a ban on used car imports, calling the situation in the capital “a complete disaster”. Georgia and other countries from the Eastern Europe and Eurasia region are major importers of used cars, most of them from Western Europe. Relatively low incomes and the widespread availability of cheaper used cars means many countries in the region have only a small
35 GEORGIA Country Report September 2018 www.intellinews.com