Saakashvili Calls for ‘Active State Involvement’ to Boost Agriculture

President Saakashvili said on March 8, that “active, direct state interference” was required in order to turn country’s “medieval agriculture sector into the agriculture of the 21st century.”

“We will manage to do it not only in frames of the modernization program by 2015, but we will achieve it within the nearest 12-18 months,” he said at a meeting held at the Ministry of Agriculture.

Saakashvili said that although “a great work has been done” in the sector, much time has been lost, because the government previously believed that this sector “would have developed by itself.”

“As it appeared, without active, purpose-oriented, direct interference of the state, especially in the agricultural sector, it is less likely to achieve concrete results,” he said.

Saakashvili also said that the Ministry of Agriculture and the entire government should turn into, what he called, “an agrarian government” in order “to increase the agricultural productivity as soon as possible.”  

He said that contrary to “old perception that an agrarian country is a poor country”, the developed agriculture sector “is one of the major criteria of development.”

In his annual address in the Parliament in February Saakashvili said that the government would allocate additional GEL 150 million to improve currently “very dissatisfactory situation” in the agriculture. He also said that the goal was to double agriculture production by 2015.

Agriculture’s share in the country’s GDP decreased from 14.8% in 2005 to 8.3% in 2009, according to the figures from the state statistics office. Agriculture contributed 9% of the country’s GDP in the first half of 2010; the sector suffered 1.8% contraction in the third quarter of 2010 and its share in GDP during the same period was 8%.

This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)