The selection process of the private partner of the Anaklia port project is ongoing with the involvement of international consultants. Such a statement made today the Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development, Levan Davitashvili, at the plenary session of the Parliament, where he is being heard through interpellation.

“Finally, we received 4 applications from 4 bidders. The qualification requirements, which are very important for the proper conduct of this process and obtaining the correct result, were met by 2 groups. One is a Swiss-Luxembourg company that has moved to the second stage and the other is a Chinese-Singaporean consortium. This is also a globally recognized group of leading companies.

As for the other two bidders, their qualification requirements were not in line with the conditions of our competition and therefore they could not proceed to the next stage, which is called the proposal stage, and therefore we will have two bidders with whom we will be negotiating over the next few months to get their proposals from their side and it will depend on the competitiveness of these proposals, the quality of these proposals, as to who will be our private partner.

Russian companies did not participate in this competition. In order that the interest and influence of the Russian or any other state or country not to dominate the interests of Georgia, we will protect our interests as much as possible and this port, as well as other important critical infrastructures, this will serve the interests of our country and our economy, hence is the configuration that the state will have a control package and the state will have control over such important critical infrastructure.

This is in contrast to the decisions that we have witnessed in previous years, when critical, important infrastructure is transferred to companies from different countries with very irresponsible concession agreements with restrictions on the rights of the state and without the rights of the state. This was our starting point when we started developing Anaklia port with this configuration.

As for the specific names of the companies, based on the confidentiality agreement with the companies, as well as the Georgian legislation and international directives, according to the conditions of the competition, we cannot publicly announce the specific names until the end of the competition, because it will harm the competition.

We will wait for the end of the competition, which will be soon, as stipulated in the terms of the competition, and then the private and public cooperation agency will provide this information to the public”, - said Levan Davitashvili.