Tag Archives: Georgia

Stock market: BGEO Group

APRIL 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Shares in BGEO Group, the London-listed holding company that owns Bank of Georgia, gained 6% this week, rallying on the company’s positive annual results.

It posted a 38.4% growth in revenue and its retail banking customer base grew by 37.8% in 2015.

Neil Janin, BGEO’s chairman, also gave a strong outlook.

“The current economic and political situation in Georgia is solid and its outlook promising,” Mr Janin said in a statement, praising the recent tax code amendments.

Georgia holds parliamentary elections in October which may impact BGEO. The company was cagey about this and said that it hoped the country would “continue in the right direction”. In Georgian politics, though, anything can happen, as we’ve learned through the years.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Ban Ki-moon cancels visit to Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia

APRIL 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon cancelled a visit to the South Caucasus this week due to an unforeseen emergency, his press service told media. The UN had planned a visit to Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in April for Mr Ban. Analysts hoped his tour would have appeased the warring sides around Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory that both Armenia and Azerbaijan claim as their own. Instead Mr Ban planned to travel to Yemen and Syria.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Editorial: Civil rights in Georgia

APRIL 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A long battle against an eavesdropping law in Georgia was resolved by the country’s Constitutional Court. It deemed the bill unconstitutional and mandated its amendment within the next 12 months.

The controversial bill, which allowed government security agencies to have unrestricted access to communications across telecom networks, was the focus of a fierce battle between the Parliament, the President and civil society in late 2014.

The political coalitions in the Parliament split during the heated debate on the bill. Ultimately, a thin majority approved the bill.

At the time, President Giorgi Margvelashvili vetoed the bill. Parliament, though, voted to override the presidential veto — dealing a huge blow to Mr Margvelashvili’s authority.

With this final victory for those fighting the bill, Georgia will now have to drop legislation that infringed civil liberties and privacy of its citizens, handing civil society a rare victory over state agencies and giving Mr Margvelashvili his payback.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

UK company to build a hydropower plant in Georgia

APRIL 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – UK-based investment company Geopower signed an agreement with Georgia’s energy ministry to build a new hydropower plant on the Mtkvari river. The new plant, located near Dzegvi, a village 20km north of Tbilisi, will cost $24m and will have a capacity of 15.7MW. Small hydropower stations are spreading across the South Caucasus to meet the region’s energy needs.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

Inter RAO wants to sell its hydropower in Georgia

APRIL 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian state-owned power distributor Inter RAO said it is considering selling its power stations in Georgia, should an appropriate offer emerge. Last week, RIA Novosti reported that Inter RAO was looking to sell its Mtkvari thermal power plant. Now, Inter RAO confirmed it is looking for a buyer for its power stations, but said it will not sell its network assets.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

Pope to visit Armenia and Georgia

APRIL 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Pope Francis will visit the South Caucasus twice this year, the Vatican said, firstly to Armenia on June 24-26 and then to Georgia and Azerbaijan on Sept. 30 – Oct. 2. This is important because Pope Francis is one of the most outspoken popes in modern times. His visit will give him an international stage to opine on the affairs of the South Caucasus.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

Tech companies choose Georgian capital for lifestyle and low salaries

TBILISI, APRIL 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia is attracting globally footloose tech start-ups because of its relatively low taxes, skilled workforce and low salaries.

One of these is Topishare, now headquartered in one of Tbilisi’s oldest districts.

The grapevines dangling above doorways, the narrow streets and 19th century architecture are all in stark contrast to Topishare’s eight- person tech team who spend their days working on building what they hope will be a cutting-edge social media network focused on giving users increased privacy and greater control over what they read.

Israelis Rotem and Hila Peled, daughter and mother, co-founded Topishare.

“We have worked from Costa Rica, to Panama and Bulgaria, but Georgia stood out to us,” Ms Peled said.

“It’s not perfect, but the relatively easy business registration, easy visas, and low developers’ salaries convinced us.”

And Topishare is just part of a trend of tech start-ups moving to the Georgian capital. The angel.co website, which monitors start-up activities, said 42 were now based in Tbilisi.

Caroline Sutcliffe, an American, set up Chaikhana, an online media training platform and publishing tool focused on the South Caucasus, in Tbilisi two years ago.

She currently employs 12 people and said that although there have been problems, such as being turfed out of an office suddenly when it was sold overnight by the owner, there are plenty of positives.

“It is cheap to open a business, easy to open a bank account, there are few strings attached, labour is cheap, and rent is cheap,” she said.

There are problems with being based in Georgia, though, Eric Barret, another American who set up Jump- start, a platform which shares open- source technologies, said. He said that Tbilisi was a pleasant place to live but poor infrastructure was a problem.

“As a tech organization, we need to rely on predictable Internet service,” he said referring to the number of unscheduled outages that hit the Georgian internet network.

“Often my entire staff has to take a trip to a cafe that has Internet so we can continue to work.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

Senior Georgian judge calls homosexuals ‘flawed’

APRIL 8 2016, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Nino Todua, a senior Georgian judge, told a parliamentary hearing on her promotion to the country’s Supreme Court that homosexuality is a moral flaw.

Her comments may be abhorrent to Western liberals, but for many Georgians Ms Todua was just reflecting their own strongly held views.

A survey by the largest data collection organisation in the country, CRRC, said that 87% of Georgia’s population believes homosexuality can never be justified.

“I feel sorry for them because of such a deviation. Every person has a flaw; I have mine and they have their flaws and that is their flaw,” Ms Todua was reported as saying when asked about homosexuals.

“There are no flawless persons. The question was why I think that it is a flaw – because cultural norms deem it to be such; it’s not just my personal opinion, the majority of the world’s population think that it’s against cultural norms.”

The homosexuality debate is important, politically, in Georgia. While anti-homosexual sentiment reflects popular opinion, it runs counter to the views of the European Union, a group that Georgia aspires to join.

And gay rights campaigners were quick to criticise Ms Todua.

Eka Chitanava, director of the local NGO Tolerance and Democracy Initiative, said that as a person in the public limelight, Ms Todua should keep her personal opinions private.

“Her beliefs will directly impact her decisions. It was a mistake from the president to nominate her for that position,” she said.

Still, on the streets of Tbilisi, it was clear that most people generally supported her position.

Shalva, a 54 year old bus driver, said: “I don’t care what people do in their bedroom, but they shouldn’t shove their life-styles in my face. Good for her for speaking up for the Georgian people. We need someone to protect our values.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

WorleyParsons wins contract in Georgia and Azerbaijan

APRIL 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Australia-based WorleyParsons said it won a five-year Engineering, Procurement, Construction Management contract with BP for its operations in Azerbaijan and Georgia. The company will service the BP-operated Sangachal Terminal and pipelines in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. It didn’t say how much the contract was worth.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

Georgia charges transit fee

APRIL 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – After months of negotiations, Georgia and Russia’s Gazprom retained a deal that will give Georgia 10% of Gazprom’s gas throughput to Armenia. The deal was heralded by the Georgian side as a victory. They said that Gazprom had wanted Georgia to charge it a transit fee for hosting a pipeline to Armenia and then pay for its own gas.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)