According to the deputy minister of foreign affairs Alexandre Ghvtisiashvili, “the appointment of economic attaches is still ongoing”. This was the response to the question posed by the journalists about the Institute of Economic Attaches, when it will start operating and what form it will take. “The process of appointing economic attaches is still ongoing, we just up-scaled it – they will no longer be attaches but rather economic envoys, we raised the level to that of ambassadors, since we believe that higher level will lead to better results and I hope that this process will commence at the start of next year. Countries have been selected where the economic envoys will be sent.
They will cover not only one country but the whole region. Accordingly, I hope that the process will start next year and will be comprehensively implemented. – stated the Deputy Minister. To the question who the economic envoys will be reporting to, Ghvtisiashvili stated that the envoys will report to the ministry of foreign affairs, however, will also work closely with the ministry of economy and other ministries. For reference, the call for applications for the commercial attaches was announced when Giorgi Kvirikashvili was the Prime Minister, on March 6 of this year and the application deadline was in April.
The government wanted to appoint commercial attaches in 6 different countries: USA, Germany, Turkey, Great Britain, United Arab Emirates, and China. However, up to now, the country has never had people tasked with attracting investments in any of the abovementioned countries. Several months ago, the minister of economy Giorgi Kobulia told bm.ge that the establishment of the institution (as intended by his predecessor) may no longer materialize and the existing employees in the embassies will be re-trained instead. “In our opinion, the economic attaches need certain modifications. We would like to utilize this institution to strengthen economic activities in the embassies and of course, the work we did to select the candidates is by no means redundant. However, we want this to be more integrated into the embassies where the economic part needs to be strengthened. Therefore, the institution will be modified”- stated Giorgi Kobulia
Author: Telara Gelantia
