OREANDA-NEWS. December 17, 2007. Vladimir Gurgenidze, Prime-Minister of Georgia, introduced a new Government Initiative on "Low-interest Credit for Entrepreneurship" to the authorities of the banks functioning in Georgia. The meeting was organized by the National Bank of Georgia and the Government of Georgia at the "Courtyard Marriott" hotel. David Amaglobeli, Acting President of the National Bank of Georgia, Nick Gilauri, the Minister of Finance of Georgia, and Kakha Bendukidze, State Minister on Reforms Coordination, attended the meeting.

Lado Gurgenidze stressed in his speech, that the new initiative is directed towards the support of a real sector of economy and the growth of employment. According to him the government should help the wide strata of the population who have a desire, zeal, ambition and fervor to start their own business. The Prime Minister mentioned, that during the last years the process of establishing new companies has been in  full swing in Georgia. The new government initiative is an additional incentive to the development of the  mentioned process as the growth of small enterprises and individual entrepreneurs,  facilitates the growth of the economy as well as improving the social background and solution of the problem of employment. The Prime Minister also stressed one more direction of the government initiative, which envisages the growth of the export potential in Georgia and which was evaluated as one of the painful and acute problems and challenges by Lado Gurgenidze.

"We jointly should manage to create the additional preferential credit resources for your customers through your management as well as through the Government and the NBG monitoring in order to encourage export," stated the Prime Minister of Georgia. According to him involvement of banking circles in the mentioned program will be voluntary on their part. "I hope that many banks will participate at least in some of its  parts, " noted Vladimir Gurgenidze and added that the general outlines of the new government initiative will be ready at the end of the current year and the program will be launched by February–March of the next year.

According to the statement by David Amaglobeli, the Acting President of the National Bank of Georgia, the new initiative of the government is directed towards the promotion of employment within the country and improvement of the export potential. According to him within the framework of the program the Government will extend the preferential credits to commercial banks, which will loan up these resources to companies in preferential terms as well. "It should be noted that the certain experience has already been accumulated in this regard when the government had been loaning up the budgetary funds to commercial banks.  It is necessary to take into consideration this experience in the course of drawing up this new program," stated David Amaglobeli.

The top officials of commercial banks, invited to the meeting, positively assessed the new government initiative and expressed their desire to participate in its implementation.