Levan Davitashvili: The national currency may appreciate even more

According to the Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development, Levan Davitashvili, the national currency has started to appreciate, finally stabilized and may strengthen even more in a few days.

According to him, today the economic parameters are exactly the same as they were before the war between Russia and Ukraine.

According to Davitashvili, economic processes, including in Georgia, are damaged by political tensions, hysteria, often biased developments, speculation, which is reflected in the GEL exchange rate.

"We, the whole economic team, clearly said that there were no preconditions for such a depreciation of the GEL. It proved to be right, and through constant communication with key business actors, representatives of the banking sector, analysts, the public, we showed that in reality, panic would fade away and the exchange rate of the national currency would stabilize, and it did.

Today we have a free exchange rate and we saw that the GEL began to stabilize, to find a point of equilibrium. We think that the economic parameters today are exactly the same as at the beginning of the war and before the war. Remember how appreciated the GEL was. Consequently, these parameters have not been modified. By this point, objectively, the rate should be in about the same equilibrium area as it was before the war. Consequently, it was all a panic and probably the effect of expectations. In this case, it can be said that with a high level of coordination with all actors and between them, together with the implementation of the decisions taken by the international community among them in terms of financial sanctions, in very close cooperation with the National Bank, the processes have stabilized and calmed down," said the Minister of Economy.

According to Levan Davitashvili, with unprecedented close cooperation between the government and the National Bank, the population saw that there were no preconditions for the depreciation of the GEL, as a result of which the exchange rate of the national currency stabilized.

As for the intervention of the National Bank - according to the Minister, the bank participated in the auction with a considerable amount of money, but in reality, it was not fully utilized, because these conditions did not have objective prerequisite.