ARMENIAN, GEORGIAN CIVIL SOCIETIES STEP IN TO BOOST CROSS-BORDER TRADE
Written by Koka Kalandadze
The Financial
May 10 2011
Georgia
The FINANCIAL — Cases of Georgian farmers getting into trouble while
crossing Armenian customs aren’t infrequent although not yet resolved.
Both sides lack the information about customs procedures and how
they’re applied. Businesses have little knowledge about trade
opportunities existing on the other side of the border which form
stumbling blocks for the future prospects of cross border cooperation.
CARE International Caucasus with its 2.5 year project aims to fill
the existing gap of information by encouraging NGOs to play the
role of mediator between communities and the local governments of
either country.
As part of the project over 15 Armenian civil society actors and local
self-governance officials arrived on a study tour last week in Georgia
to meet near border Georgian representatives of municipalities and
NGOs and explore opportunities for how to forge further cooperation.
The project is funded by the Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC)
and its budget is roughly 465 000 EUR.
As Anthony Foreman, STAGE II Project director at CARE International
in the Caucasus told The FINANCIAL, the project attempts to create
conditions in which civil society organizations can find out about
each other and cooperate. “In the present advocacy campaign there are
specific areas for cooperation and certain types of information need
to be passed from the other side of the border,” Foreman said.
“For example there were cases of misunderstanding cross border
restrictions of trade. If the Georgian customs were transparent then
the Armenian side was not enabling Georgian producers to bring the
goods there which led to an odd situation for Georgian farmers as
they had to pay an import fee for their own products, returning back
to the country. …The organizations will be working as links to the
local population having good outreach skills so that the information
they’ll deliver to those people will be relevant,” noted Foreman to
The FINANCIAL.
There are 10 NGOs already involved in these processes on both sides.
There are 6 from Georgia, one from each municipality near the border.
>From Armenia there are 4 of them representing 3 bordering regions.
“There is an observation if we go very far back that Northern Armenia
had enormous activity (trade) in Soviet Times and even before, of
which the gravity centre was Tbilisi and now it’s re-oriented towards
the South, namely Yerevan. So what we want to explore in this project
is to find what the barriers are: whether there are psychological
barriers, legal barriers or perhaps physical barriers,” he said.
A study on cross-border cooperation commissioned by CARE last year
found that the main barriers to the cross-border trade are lack of
information about customs procedures by both exporters and importers,
difficulties in obtaining certificates of origin of goods and
permissions on agricultural product import, poor conditions of local
roads and some deficiencies or regulations of customs checkpoints. For
instance, according to the study, customs check-points on the Georgian
side (Ninotsminda, Guguti, Akhkerpi) are not equipped with customs
scales; check-point “Ninotsminda” is not entitled to customs clearance
of goods with value above 700 GEL, etc.
We know that women are quite actively engaged in trade, and it’s
interesting to find out how they feel about these relationships. We’ve
already held a trade fair in Armenia; it was a really good event for
the reason of exploring the economic opportunities,” Foreman said.
Armenian representatives of NGOs and community association leaders,
attending the workshop in Tbilisi , reiterated that the existing gap
of information needed to be filled.
As Andronik Veranyan, Noemberyan Community Union Director and Yerevan
NGO President said there are more opportunities than problems to
explore.
Speaking about the initiative Van Baiburt, Adviser of Georgian
President Mikheil Saakashvili , welcomed such cooperation and spoke
of Georgia as the “mediator in the South Caucasus.”
“Historically, Georgians had good relations with Armenians. Georgia
played the role of mediator when struggles used to arise between the
neighbouring countries of Armenia, Turkey and Azerbaijan although
when Russians came in the 19th century, those relations got tough. Now
they are getting warmer and not through force but through communities
themselves with the help of NGOs that are willing to take their voices
to be heard by the government,” said Baiburt.
************ “Georgia has become an example for the neighbouring
countries of Armenia and Azerbaijan in the direction of liberal
policies and reforms carried out in the last few years.”
************
“Over 200 investors have already entered Georgia, most of them in
the last 2 years, solely for the reason that the liberal environment
and transparent procedures of customs clearance and business laws are
seen. This is what attracts those business people and with time our
neighbours will understand that and actually gradually they’ll make
their policies more liberal,” he said.
“Russians, in fact, started the copying of reforms accomplished
in Georgia that is of the police, education, tax, tech-inspection
of vehicles, etc. The latter was addressed only a few weeks ago by
Medvedev whilst Saakashvili made improvements in tech-inspections 6
years ago.
This is actually plagiarism from the Russian side. In addition
intellectual rights are broken when none of them mention that Georgia
has already passed this stage,” claims Baiburt.
“In the Caucasus region today we are in a period of transition. During
the Soviet times the economies of the member states were so closely
incorporated that one almost couldn’t exist without the other. And
after this collapse, each of those countries’ economies started
to struggle to survive. To look at other countries examples for
instance the colonies which broke free from English and French rule,
a transition period still persists there. Conversely it took just a
few years for the Georgian economy to recover,” said Baiburt.
From: A. Papazian