BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 17
By Tamilla Mammadova - Trend:
In the first week of June, mortgage lending declined by 39 percent compared to the same period in 2019 in Georgia, said Head of the Georgian Association of Developers Irakli Rostomashvili, Trend reports referring to Georgian media.
To improve the situation on the real estate market, the Georgian government launched an initiative to subsidize the interest rate on mortgage loans in national currency. In particular, if the interest rate on the loan is 11 percent, then the buyer of the apartment will pay only 7 percent.
“Any crisis hits the construction industry. In Georgia, tourism and the real estate business have suffered the most from COVID-19. The latter is the sector that is the largest employer in the country starting from laborers to architects," Irakli Rostomashvili said.
As he noted, construction is the first link in the whole economic chain that supports a number of related industries.
“By supporting the construction industry, the state supports other sectors of the economy, which will go bankrupt without developers. This program will help 20,000 citizens who bought apartments when the construction was launched and paid part of the cost of real estate, and now, if the development business collapses, they may be left without money and apartments. We have already suffered this after the global crisis of 2008-2009,” Rostomashvili explained.
He believes that the assistance provided to the construction business will help to restore the country’s economy. In his opinion, this also is beneficial for the state; if the construction industry survives and continues to develop, it will pay a lot more to the budget than the government will spend on its support.
“The government support will allow developers not only to save jobs, but to start new projects and create new jobs,” the head of the Developers Association said.
Rostomashvili hailed the government’s initiative to acquire apartments for refugees since it brings two benefits at once - on the one hand, refugees get normal living conditions, and on the other, it boosts the construction activity.
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