Georgian First Vice PM highlights development of financial technologies as Gov’t’s one of most important priorities

Levan Davitashvili, the First Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia, on Friday said the development of financial technologies was a very important direction for the country's economy.

In his address at an international conference on financial technologies organised by the National Bank, Davitashvili emphasized Georgia’s unprecedented economic growth in recent years, with average real economic growth of over 9.5 percent over the past four years, and further highlighted the importance of developing inclusive financial services to ensure and maintain this growth.

As he noted, when it came to the development and inclusiveness of the country, access to finance was critically important, and the most important way to achieve this in the modern world was through the use of financial technologies and added that in this regard, Georgia was a fairly developed country, with one of the leading banking sectors in the region.

“For example, according to Global Finance, Bank of Georgia was recognized as the best digital bank in 2024, which is an indicator that banks in Georgia offer customers not only traditional services, but also financial services based on innovative technologies. However, it is very important for us that the financial market is not represented only by banking services and that there are as many opportunities as possible in terms of using various financial instruments. Therefore, the [Economy] Ministry, together with the National Bank, is working closely on capital market reform and the introduction of various financial instruments. It can be said that this is one of the most important priorities of the Georgian Government in terms of economic reforms”, Davitashvili said.

He also underlined that in a rapidly changing global environment, it was knowledge-dependent and knowledge-related economic directions that had the most potential, and therefore, strategic investments should be made in these directions so that the country had a competitive economy in the future.

He further emphasized that supporting innovation and technology was important to maintain the competitiveness of the entire economy, and underscored that the Economy Ministry had a fairly active policy in this direction - the Georgian Innovation and Technology Agency had been actively working to support innovative startups in recent years.

“In recent years, we have spent about ₾45 million [$122.4 million] to support innovative startups, as a result, the economic effect exceeds about half a billion GEL. The direction and encouragement of fintechs is especially important, which is also facilitated by the Georgian Innovation and Technology Agency - we have invested up to ₾4 million [$10.9 million] in 17 startups and they have attracted more than ₾55 million [$149.6 million]. I hope that these startups will be very successful in the future, grow and be able to enter international markets, for which the Ministry of Economy and the state are doing everything possible”, Davitashvili noted.

As the First Vice Prime Minister added changes would be made to the Law on Innovations, which would provide unprecedented tax breaks for innovative startups for a period of ten years, including zero tax burden for the first three years and noted that a new international startup acceleration program would be launched this year, which would include at least 160 startups annually and provide each of them with access to financing of up to ₾200,000 [$ 544 thousand].