Georgian Leader Hails Estonia as ‘Important Example’
President Saakashvili said after talks with visiting Estonian President Arnold Rüütel on May 11 that Estonia’s assistance in Georgia’s NATO and EU aspiration is of huge importance for Georgia. Saakashvili also stressed that the “Estonian experience is a very important example” for Georgia.
“Because what is happening now with Georgia, Estonia experienced several years ago: economic embargo, blockade, undeclared economic sanctions and attempts to destroy the economy and create problems for [Estonian] families. But Estonia is also a beacon of hope for us, because Estonia, whose export products were blocked in Russia, exports only 4-5% of its shares to Russia today while several years ago it was 90% and Estonia was almost totally dependent on the Russian market; but now Estonia has the most developed economy in Eastern Europe,” Saakashvili said.
“Today Estonia manages to have three times more income per capita – not including gas and oil – than Russia, which has gas and oil and other natural resources and which now lives three times as poor as Estonia, whose destruction and submission was a goal of Russia’s policy in those times,” he said.
Saakashvili confirmed that former Prime Minister of Estonia Mart Laar, whom he described as a “major author of the Estonian economic miracle,” will become the Georgian President’s aide to help in economic reforms.
“In several days he [Mart Laar] will move to Tbilisi and take an office at the State Chancellery to work jointly over Georgia’s economic reforms and on the development of Georgia’s economy and on overcoming those obstacles and problems which are being created and which I am sure are of a temporary nature,”
He also said that Georgia is following the experience of Estonia by equipping schools with computers and said that the program which “took five years in Estonia will be accomplished in Georgia in two and a half years.”
Saakashvili also said that during the talks the two sides discussed Estonia’s assistance in eradicating the distribution of falsified Georgian wines in the Baltic States.
He said that the Georgian government plans to spend “millions” on advertising Georgian wines worldwide, but he also called on the Georgian wine-makers once again to be more vigorous and motivated in promoting Georgian wine on new markets.
“We can, without any problems, redistribute the amount of Georgian wine, which was intended for the Russian market – and this is not a very large amount in the context of the world scale – to the world’s other markets, if not this year then at least in the next two years,” Saakashvili said.
Saakashvili said that Georgia will open an embassy in the Estonian capital Tallinn this year “and our representative’s major goal there will be to gain access to new markets.”
This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)
