BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 26
Tamilla Mammadova – Trend:
ISET-PI, a think-tank based at the International School of Economics of Tbilisi named most important measures that government can take to overcome the COVID-19 crisis and achieve speedy recovery of Georgian economy, the ISET-P told Trend.
According to the source, these measures include:
• Speeding up vaccination process by ensuring sufficient amount of vaccines, promoting vaccination and providing information campaign.
• Broaden government support programs (government grants, credit guarantees and etc.) to cover business sectors that suffered the most during COVID-19 pandemic (e.g. tourism), and make government program efficient (properly assess proposed projects and track already financed projects).
• Georgia should prepare for increased tourism inflow after stabilizing the epidemiological situation in the country (prepare tourism infrastructure and promote Georgia as a safe country).
• Promote Georgia's involvement in the global and regional value chains.
• Increase competitiveness of the country by structural reforms.
"It is difficult (if not even impossible) to predict what will be exchange rate by the end of the year, because it depends on many factors that are out of our control, like the epidemiological situation in Georgia and partner countries, the phase of the vaccination process, the growth rate of export and import, increase of the tourism inflow and remittances, attracting FDI and etc," the ISET-PI said.
According to the source, it is notable that lari recently started appreciation against most of the partner country currencies, but it is hard to say if this trend will continue in the future.
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