Meeting of the President of the National Bank of Georgia  and CEO of Geostat

12 Mar '10

Within the framework of the event organized on March 12 by the Business Association of Georgia, the businessmen had the meeting with the President of NBG Giorgi Kadagidze and CEO of National Office of Statistics, Zaza Chelidze.

The meeting was of acquaintanceship nature and aimed at providing the information concerning exchange rate policy and forecast, credit accessibility and price, as well as the activity of GeoStat.

Giorgi Kadagidze informed the participants about the steps made by the National Bank of Georgia towards underpinning the Georgian Lari and overviewed the advantage of the existing, floating rate on the example of international practice.

According to Mr. Kadagidze, the instruments of insurance of currency risks are only at the stage of introduction and upon their full enactment Lari credibility will significantly improve and thus the amount of loans issued in Lari.

The President of NBG emphasized the fact that increased issuance of loans in national currency under floating interest rate encourages the enactment of interest rate transmission mechanism which will allow them to reduce loan-related costs for the business by decreasing the policy rate. Finally the borrower will be maximally insured against currency risks. He added that the National Bank is planning to offer new instruments to commercial banks making issuance of loans in Lari more accessible.

At the initiative of BAG President Giorgi Chirakadze, for the purposes of providing the businessmen with more information on this issue, it has been decided to organize several workshops with participation of the NBG, commercial banks and businessmen.

The businessmen heard the information about the ongoing activity, current reforms and future plans of GeoStat from the CEO. Zaza Chelidze stressed how important is the information developed by the GeoStat for the business and asked them to increase their cooperation in terms of information exchange for equal usefulness.

At the end of the meeting Giorgi Chirakadze and Zaza Chelidze signed the Memorandum of Cooperation between the BAG and GeoStat within the framework of which joint working groups shall be set up.