I wish to share several positive pieces of information with our public. Economic growth has been high in January-February. It reached 7.1 %, which is very important, especially when we had a very high, double-digit economic growth last year. We have a rather solid, high economic growth indicator against the background. It was announced today by the Prime Minister of Georgia.

As the Head of Government of Georgia noted, economic growth was mainly conditioned by high intensity of operation in various directions, including those in the following sectors: construction, financial intermediation, trade, transport and tourism.

“Economic growth was over 8% in January and 5.8% in February. The weighted average is 7.1%, which is very welcoming, of course, especially by taking into consideration what is happening around the world: wars and a whole number of challenges. I will elaborate on this later on. It is a very serious achievement.

Also, I wish to tell you what led to the significantly positive development, resulting in the high economic growth rate: construction, financial intermediation, trade, transport, tourism sectors with high intensity in every direction.

Second important piece of information that I wish to share with the general public is the reduction of inflation. You may well be aware that inflation was and remains to be a challenge. The entire world is facing high levels of inflation nowadays. It is a concern in the USA, Europe, Euro Zone, etc. For instance, the Euro Zone had a double-digit inflation last year, while the EU Member States – 20-25%, reaching even 30%, Moldova – 37%. Our small country – Georgia – managed to reduce it to 5.3% irrespective of the challenges faced after a peak last year, when we had the highest level of inflation at 13%. It declined to 9% at the end of the year and was down to 5.3% in March. Of course, it is a huge progress. Reduction is almost 2.8 percentage points compared to the previous months. I wish to once again explain what it actually means for our people. Reduced pressure of inflation is naturally automatically reflected on food prices, transport, medication – everything. It is a result of our joint efforts, my dear friends. You may remember that we started working on it last year. We managed and significantly reduced prices on medication. Reduction was in the range of 60-70-80%. We introduced reference prices and led to 200 MLN GEL savings in out-of-pocket payments by population last year. You may also be aware that we also started interaction with importers on reducing the fuel prices. We had successful negotiations and prices on fuel have been reduced. It also played a role, of course. The third direction is food prices. Of course, our citizens – our people – are concerned with it. We have had the first phase of successful negotiations towards this end as well. The Ministry of Economy will be presenting a Draft Law very soon and we will be ensuring this through a regulation as well. The law will make sure that fair rules of game exist on the market and all that will be reflected in reduced inflation. Current indicator is 5.3%, which is very thrilling, of course. We should maintain it. This work needs to be continued. High economic growth is required with a low level of inflation and what is most important – we need peace and stability”, - said Irakli Garibashvili.