News
"In the current circumstances, delivery of an excessive amount of grapes at the given price is a high state responsibility and speculative statements in this area are absolutely wrong and inappropriate ‘’ said Levan Davitashvili
"This year, Rkatsiteli and Kakhetian green grapes will amount to 80 tetri during the harvest. We might hear numerous speculative statements, many people might say, that the price should be this or that number ( higher or lower), setting their focus on the grape price, which we had in the previous years.
At present, we have very difficult situation in the viticulture sector not only in Georgia, but in many leading European wine-producing countries, like Spain, Italy and France as well, which make up more than 70% of the world wine production. All these countries face problems in the storage of grapes; There is a problem of production and storage capacity of grapes as well.
We have created and offer minimum amount of guarantees to our winegrowers in these difficult circumstances. In my opinion, this is the most significant achievement and a sense of solidarity showing to our Georgian society. We should also mention, that accumulated funds are the currency accumulated by Georgian taxpayers. This is a sense of solidarity for viticulturists to appreciate their work and support them throughout 2020 season to face less problems.
The wine market conjuncture is quite difficult; In general, the situation is quite complicated. The Horeka segment in Georgia - hotels and restaurants - were closed for several months. In our neighborhood, due to the pandemic, the situation is even worse and the restriction regime is still in place.
Prime Minister has mentioned, that we had an increase in exports in recent years, which we might not achieve this year, but on the other hand, production of raw material was mostly depended on the export growth.
We produce 10-12% more grapes annually, because we have been intensively planting vineyards in recent years. That was the motivation for the industry, furthermore, at present, from a few dozen companies we’ve increased the number and have got about 300 wine companies, accordingly, the number of industrially processed grapes will reach about 300,000 tons by 2020.
"In the current circumstances, the delivery of an excessive amount of grapes at the given price is a high state responsibility, therefore, speculative statements in this area are absolutely wrong and inappropriate ‘’ said Levan Davitashvili.