Supporting an Increase in the Competitiveness of Georgia’s Economy at Country, Industry and Enterprise Levels

About the Project

The Economic Prosperity Initiative (EPI) project, with a budget of US$40 million, implemented by Deloitte Consulting Overseas Projects LLC and funded by USAID Caucasus, was the largest economic development project in Georgia to take place during the period of 2011-2014. The Project aimed to increase the competitiveness of Georgia’s economy at country, industry and enterprise levels. It closely worked with different government, private and non-governmental organizations, agencies, and institutions, involving key stakeholders in the implementation process. More specifically, the primary objectives of the Project were to increase turnover, increase exports, attract investments, increase productivity, and increase employment in targeted sectors in agriculture and non-agriculture value chains. This multi-sectoral and multi-component project was composed of four main pillars:

• Non-agriculture/manufacturing and services;
• Agriculture;
• Business-enabling environment (BEE); and
• Crosscutting.

The manufacturing and services component of the Project focused on value chains development pursuant to the above-stated objectives in the following sectors: general tourism; MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences, exhibitions/events) tourism; wine tourism; apparel; paper packaging; ICT (software); transport and logistics; business development services; and construction materials.

The agriculture component concerned the following sectors: mandarins; hazelnuts; vegetables (including greenhouse vegetables); and berries.

The sectors for both of these components were carefully selected beforehand through a private sector analysis undertaken by Deloitte Consulting, applying a value chain assessment instrument on 25 sectors in Georgia to gauge their potential to increase productivity, exports, investments, turnover, and employment.

The business-enabling environment component was designed to support the improvement of the general business environment of Georgia with a focus on specific reform areas such as: land registration; intellectual property rights (IPR); tax and customs; investment climate; state procurement system; and trade and transit analysis.

The cross-cutting component connected the other components and supported the beneficiaries and stakeholders in terms of: skills development; strengthening the role of women in NGOs; access to finance; agro insurance; private pensions fund scheme feasibility study; and public-private dialogue.

Our Role

The ACT team applied its expertise to support the Project in the following ways:

• Provided– institutional capacity building of public-private-non-government tourism stakeholders to improve tourism administration, outgoing and incoming visitors’ data collection, and the corresponding methodology and analysis system in Georgia;
• Provided technical assistance to the manufacturing and services component of the Project in developing an international visitors’ survey and a methodology for effective data collection to improve tourism in the country in general;
• Assisted the Georgian National Tourism Administration (GNTA) and the EPI project in inbound and outbound visitors’ data collection system development and supported its implementation;
• Introduced best practices and knowledge-sharing to promote a deeper understanding of visitors’ analysis and provide statistically valid templates for more effective tourism policy development within the public and private sectors in tourism, including capacity building of key stakeholders therein;
• Conducted face-to-face interviews at a variety of border-crossing points (road, airport, port, and railway) with 1096 international visitors who left Georgia between 26 August and 5 September 2011; and
• Supported the BEE component in the country’s general business environment improvement reform by developing and delivering a household and business competitiveness perception survey, data collection, and countrywide analysis in targeted groups of SMEs.

Project Outcome(s)

• The Project has delivered an improved methodology and statistically valid templates for data collection and analysis of visitors to Georgia for key stakeholders in the tourism sector of Georgia, including the GNTA;
• The work undertaken in the course of the Project improved the accuracy and transparency of data analysis and tourism administration policies; and
• Improved Georgia’s compliance with the European Union (EU – Eurostat) and the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) obligations regarding data collection and analysis standards.