Certain Significant Imperatives

Op-Ed

Now that we know the difference between economic growth and degrowth, bestowing indisputable preference to growth as such in Georgia, we should never forget that growth depends on various economic forces, especially the population, capital and ideas; all those variables working in concert to promote general productivity: growth of population supplies the economy with a workforce, ideas unite labor with capital to create new products, and capital investment raises productivity, giving impetus to further economic accomplishments.

The world knows a new powerful class of investors and pace-setting modernizers to invigorate our economy, certainly at some risk, with their financial and intellectual resources, if we need and want to receive this kind of help. There is readiness in the world to move around and introduce those resources wherever there is demand for them. The only thing we need to do is to look around with wide-open eyes and search for capital and knowhow assistance.

The governments that operate with integrity, wisdom and responsibility, and the reliable laws that function effectively in the country, will encourage the successful implementation of this international human potential to the benefit of their citizenry. The most valuable investment of capital in Georgia might very well be investment in education, which makes it possible to first produce new ideas and then employ them in our slowly but still developing economy, thus creating an opportunity for the birth of not only new products but whole new industries, attracting both money and labor force, and gradually refusing to maintain the ones that have turned into no-win white elephants.

As a matter of fact, progress might be impossible without an undelayed revitalizing and energizing of our economy with refreshing new ideas, pregnant with novel projects and innovative ventures, including joint ones with our partner nations. There are many entrepreneurs in Georgia who have adopted the western ways of doing business and introduced their experience into our local business processes. One of the best examples of this is grafting in the Georgian megapolis the purely American sales culture of big malls, with their huge multifunctional premises, garages, eateries, staff-training style, and routine trade operations. This is all perfect, but it is also time for us to enrich ourselves, and the world too, with our own new economic ideas, which is impossible without the relevant education and experience thereof.

The business process is a complicated, sensitive and live course of commercial action and it cannot thrive based only on borrowed ideas and practices. New ideas usually beget new products and the new products are the movers of economy. This said, the promoters of Georgia’s economic progress should always keep in mind that we have to put into internal and international markets some new products, the more the better, if we want to make a difference, and do this to our greatest benefit.

There is one more thing that is crucial to productivity: human capital in the form of education and training. We can bring in the most modern hi-tech equipment, let’s say on borrowed money, but even the state-of-the-art tools are of no use if the valuable gear finds itself in the hands of workers, engineers and technologists who don’t understand the new equipment. Here, the only solution is to enhance old skills and acquire new ones via teaching and guidance, based on a new instructive endeavor called lifelong learning. Next is rule of law. No investor will lift a finger if there is no guarantee that the money spent today will yield bigger capital tomorrow, guaranteed only if the country entertains unbiased and independent courts, a law system that is crystal-clear, and of course the right and protection to private property.

And democracy? Yes, democracy might help but it is not the only thing we need to operate with to achieve economic progress. Democracy, plus umpteen various other ingredients! We have to let the market work in a free and logical fashion, and the market will productively work in Georgia only if all the above-mentioned imperatives are observed and faithfully maintained.

By Nugzar B. Ruhadze