{"id":16372,"date":"2021-03-20T09:22:05","date_gmt":"2021-03-20T05:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/?p=16372"},"modified":"2021-03-20T09:22:05","modified_gmt":"2021-03-20T05:22:05","slug":"we-used-to-joke-that-we-should-erect-a-monument-to-lobio-beans-as-lobio-had-saved-us-and-now-we-have-to-think-about-a-monument-to-potato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/we-used-to-joke-that-we-should-erect-a-monument-to-lobio-beans-as-lobio-had-saved-us-and-now-we-have-to-think-about-a-monument-to-potato\/","title":{"rendered":"We Used to Joke That We Should Erect a Monument to Lobio (Beans) as Lobio Had Saved Us, and Now We Have to Think About a Monument to Potato"},"content":{"rendered":"

The number of Covid-infected people in the world has exceeded 120 million. This is one of the reasons why the price of gold and cryptocurrency has risen in the world market. Just think, the price of a pure \u00a0gold wedding ring has risen by 42.26% in Georgia over the past year. The usual 5-gram ring costs more than 1000 GEL, and for a couple to start a family, they need at least 2,000 GEL only for the rings. This is also one of the reasons why few people in Georgia think about getting married and, consequently, the birthrate decreases from year to year. In addition,\u00a0 the increased \u00a0mortality rate due to Covid-19 \u00a0will critically drop the vital events. <\/strong><\/p>\n

May be, \u00a0we don\u2019t need new families or we need new families and, where there is great love, the gold ring solves a lot of nothing. Let\u2019s switch to the foodstuff: people will exist without gold but not \u00a0without food. During the last year, the prices of the following products increased the most: sunflower oil \u2013 by 62.03%, buckwheat \u2013 by 38.44%, sugar \u2013 by 36.72%.<\/strong> Let\u2019s narrow down the food consumption circle and say that the population does not consume sunflower oil, buckwheat and take \u00a0sugar-free tea or coffee (by the way, sugar is obviously not good for health). What can we do about the fact that, on average, food prices have raised by a total of 17 to 20%?<\/strong> And this increase has continued for the last five years. In the last five-year period<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0(with a reference to the five-year plan as the Communists would say), product prices have at least doubled and, in some cases, increased more times. \u00a0Add to that the inflation of the national currency and you will realize that we are in a very bad situation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We have not mentioned GEL inflation accidentally. In the last year alone, the National Bank has intervened\u00a0 993 million US dollars from the Reserve Fund to maintain the GEL inflation rate. It took just about a \u00a0billion \u00a0to ensure that the GEL \u00a0has not depreciated more than it does today.<\/strong> By comparison, the amount spent on interventions in the last year is much higher than the amount \u00a0in foreign exchange auctions held in any other year. For example, during the 2016 crisis, NBG \u00a0sold\u00a0 280 million US dollars through auctions, in 2015\u00a0 – \u00a0287 million US dollars and in 2014 – 300 million US dollars. For your information, \u00a0the reserve fund amounts to \u00a0about 4 billion dollars, and what do you think was the result of putting 25% of this reserve on the market? At first glance, nothing negative, as the bank has replenished its reserve again and it is now slightly over 4 billion, although this replenishment was achieved by taking on foreign debt. <\/strong><\/p>\n

The country had the lowest foreign debt during the presidency of Eduard Shevardnadze. Thereafter, \u00a0we started the construction and the UNM government left us 7 billion in debt (during Shevardnadze\u2019s presidency the debt was not even a billion), \u00a0and the Georgian Dream doubled this figure.<\/p>\n

According to the National Bank of Georgia (see www.nbg.gov.ge<\/a> ), Georgia\u2019s total external debt as of March 31, 2020, amounted to 18.3 billion US dollars and this is even higher today. Therefore, if we do not break the schedule in March, we will pay 85 million in foreign debt, and this schedule is accounted for several years. This is in the case if we do not increase the debt again and, if we add it, it may happen that the country is declared bankrupt and then we will say goodbye to the prospect of living without debt for at least half a century.<\/p>\n

The National Movement justified the taking of external debt \u00a0by infrastructure projects. They used to say that \u00a0there are roads to be built, buildings to be constructed, and in order to prevent corruption the ministers \u00a0need salaries of a few thousand \u00a0each. You can make you lough but in the conditions of the Georgian Dream, twice as many infrastructure projects were implemented than the previous government was able to do, but the main question – what benefits the people got from this, is still unanswered. We understand that good roads have increased the tourist potential, that everyone wants to have a well-maintained infrastructure, but the same tourists say that they prefer to go to the villages on horseback rather than to drive on the paved and brushed road. Yes, concrete roads in Svaneti, Khevsureti, Racha may be liked by locals, but less by tourists.<\/p>\n

A separate topic is state subsidies for \u00a0various products. Everyone is happy where food is cheap, but no one thinks that this cheapness is caused by our taxes. Nor does anyone think that the price of bread that the state holds in so tightly \u00a0today, is much higher than what we pay, but the state increases \u00a0subsidies and it all goes out of our pocket again.\u00a0 We may not feel it, but in reality this amount is withheld \u00a0in other areas. If high-ranking officials have high salaries to prevent a bribe, in what way has the lower echelon\u00a0 offended? The lower echelon unites those people who work \u00a0just like a donkey and in return they only receive the grass on a stick, which they \u00a0could not ever reach. Let\u2019s look \u00a0at our incomes and see who has doubled their salary or pension, or where the \u00a0jobs have been doubled in the last five years? Nothing similar happened, we move backwards, but we are still alive.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes we get the impression that we are participating in a big experiment called \u201cHow long can a hungry nation stay?\u201d During Shevardnadze\u2019s time, people joked: we must erect a monument to lobio as the lobio \u00a0saved us. \u00a0And now this product has such a price that is considered a kind of culinary delight. Now, probably, we should think about a monument to potato as it is the cheapest, but a product that is sold with us is not actually a potato. Remember how many times the potato was returned from the border when it had \u00a0potato wart disease but nobody knows \u00a0how many have entered.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Grants from Europe and America, in practice, never contain a social package. The West \u00a0has not ever \u00a0told the Georgian government \u00a0to take money and to provide it to the \u00a0population, nor it says this \u00a0now and probably will not say in the future. By provision \u00a0we do not mean that people shall buy \u00a0bread and take it home. No, we are talking about projects that will lead to mass employment of people and the employed person will then buy both bread and cheese. The West pays for the implementation of reforms but \u00a0the majority of the population has no idea what reforms are being implemented, why and for what.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Please, name at least one reform that has brought \u00a0social ease to ordinary people.<\/strong> You cannot name it, and this is when the authorities have been talking about these reforms since 2003. All this is actually written on paper, it turns out that the democratic development of state institutions is a fairy tale. During the period of \u00a0the previous government the opposition was pointing to the authoritarianism of state institutions and the same is happening now. Where do the grants allocated by the West for the construction of these institutions go? That\u2019s right – in the pockets of the individuals, \u00a0and then what if this pocket changes periodically, the population still does not get \u00a0anything.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The fairy tale also turned out to be that the rise in taxes would need a referendum. The government easily raises taxes and will raise them in the future. The \u00a0grants will never reach the population, and the West will constantly say that at first Georgia has \u00a0democratic institutions to build. The West gives us grants from year to year, and the fact that we are not ready yet and \u201cwe have democratic institutions to build\u201d is best known in the West. They know that this money does not go to its destination, but they are silent, as if they do not understand what the thing is, because when any high-ranking Georgian official says out loud that Georgia \u00a0is ready for NATO and the European Union, they point to the very institutions that should have been \u201cbuilt\u201d but they have not done a stroke of work. That is why they live in harmony. It is already for the second decade \u00a0that the camels just keep walking when the hungry population \u00a0bark. The National Bank will intervene again, it will again artificially maintain \u00a0the GEL exchange rate, will not increase the price of bread at the expense of \u00a0the money from our taxes, and then, when the situation aggravates more, it will take another debt at our expense and in our hope. As of today, the foreign debt per \u00a0citizen of Georgia is more than 17 thousand GEL. The newborn child in Georgia already has a debt and this debt is \u00a0pretty \u00a0solid.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Beso Barbakadze <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The number of Covid-infected people in the world has exceeded 120 million. This is one of the reasons why the price of gold and cryptocurrency has risen in the world market. Just think, the price of a pure \u00a0gold wedding ring has risen by 42.26% in Georgia over the past year. The usual 5-gram ring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,9],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16374,"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16372\/revisions\/16374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}