In addition to local investors, Colliers MMS provides services to non-resident investors interested in Georgian market. Operating in this segment is an important part of the company’s strategy, as one of the missions of Colliers MMS is to involve new investors to promote foreign investment and to attract their capital to the regional market.
What kind of support do foreign investors expect from a consulting company? The company's managing directors will answer this question.
What types of investors are interested in investing in mining in Georgia and what kind of support do they basically need? Maia Zavrashvili and Irakli Kilauridze, the managing directors of the company - will answer this question.
Despite the global challenge created by the pandemic, we are happy that investing in the mineral resources sector in Georgia is still attractive and interesting. This applies to both local and export resources. The basic interest of our clients is focused on valuable minerals that are not licensed and can be developed in a short or a medium term. Despite the narrow-field and in general, the country’s investment attractiveness, addressing a number of issues still remains a challenge for businesses. These may be: local labor resources, in many cases inflexible and unpredictable regulatory environment, rapidness of dispute resolution, a social resistance, and postponed discretionary decisions by governmental agencies. We, as business consultants, in this case have the function of a middle link and often have to combine the function of an intermediary between the state and the investor to ensure the ease of doing business at all stages of the business.
What kind of services do you provide to a foreign investor in most cases?
Obviously every client has an individual requirement and their interests vary. Non-residents are basically interested in obtaining primary information such as an investment environment and investment safety and security guarantees. The first step for starting partnership with a foreign investor is to prepare a business operating guide. In this regard, we seek to provide them with information on international agreements ratified by Georgia, the general terms of judicial system and proceedings, the tax regime, sectoral legislation, environmental requirements and labor policy. In parallel, the business requires high-quality feasibility studies, financial profitability analysis of planned activities, risk research, etc.
Tell us about investors who are considering to enter Georgia, what country they are from and what is the scale of investment projects?
Based on the peculiar features of the mining sector, the scale of capital investment depends on the volume of reserves, which requires very detailed studies. Generally, this industry is quite capital-intensive, however the investment risk is also high. Correspondingly, at the initial stage, the majority of investors consider conducting high-quality research, which involves search for reserves. The investment scale of the project depends on the results of the research. If the investor is convinced of the existence of industrial reserves and the perspectives for development of the ore, the investment scale of the project for metal-type ores will exceed tens of millions of dollars.
As for the groups of investors interested in Georgian market, we are pleased that the Western investment circles have emerging interest in the market of our country and the region in general. We are currently cooperating with British, Canadian and Turkish companies that have good experience in operating in the sector, and we are also providing services to reputable and respectable companies whose experience, technical approaches and knowledge flow will certainly improve and strengthen the current state of the sector in Georgia. We also cooperate with small so-called “junior”, albeit well-experienced multinational companies. Technical experience and success stories in the development of other deposits are important in this sector.
It has been only a year since Colliers MMS started its business in the field of minerals and environmental services in the region. How can the company assess the past period, was the introduction of this direction successful?
Colliers are developing service types globally, thus the coverage area of the sectors that has recently surpassed real estate, has been expanded. For more than a year we have launched these directions together with MMS, and the current results speak for a successful start. Despite the pandemic challenges, the interest is equally high in both mining consulting and environmental services. The feedback we receive on a daily basis is important to us and we do our best to adapt our services to the needs of the business. We try to be proactive, to offer business investment opportunities in advance, to introduce our country to the world and show the advantages of doing business in Georgia.
What are Colliers MMS’s future plans and agenda of the company?
We have quite ambitious plans. Our goal is to create an even more successful project history, to demonstrate Georgia as the best place for doing business to even more investors. We want our company to be associated with quality and success. We plan to build quality infrastructure for our clients across the region, develop online platforms for searching investment projects and supporting clients to help them to make rapid and commercially feasible decisions.
mm.colliers.ge | +995591222227 | maia.zavrashvili@colliers.ge
