The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) predicts that food and food prices could rise from 8% to 22% globally as a result of Russia's war against Ukraine.

The report, published by the organization notes that the number of people, who are starving globally can increase by 8-13 million from 2022 to 2023.

Given that Georgia has not joined the sanctions against Russia, Rati Kochlamazashvili, Deputy Chairman of the Georgian Farmers' Association, suggests that Russia will not ban imports to Georgia and there will not be shortages, although prices for products will increase significantly.

"Price growth is unequivocal because few will be available to them, especially for developing countries, so the number of people who are starving will increase.

At the same time, fuel prices are rising, and an important factor is the increase in fertilizer prices, all this means that there will be great pressure on prices. Last year we had high inflation in food products and unfortunately the same trend will continue this year, but now it is difficult to predict how much it will increase, obviously it depends on the duration of current events in Ukraine.

It will also affect us in terms of food imports, however, given that we have not joined the sanctions, we can say that there will not be such threat as in relation to other countries. This is a crisis that will affect us as well as many countries in the world”, - Kochlamazashvili declared.

According to the Georgian Farmers' Association, the share of food imports from Russia to Georgia has increased from 19 to 26% (from 213 million to 349 million USD) in the last 10 years.

As of the data of 2021, agro-food products worth $ 349 million were imported, which was 34% of the total imports from Russia to Georgia. Georgia is mostly dependent on Russia for imports of wheat, sunflower oil, chocolate, confectionery, margarine, corn, pasta.