TBILISI

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a $15 million loan to help Georgia in purchasing COVID-19 vaccines and the equipment necessary to administer them.

The loan will allow Georgia to purchase 700,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccines, enough to inoculate around 300,000 people in the country of 3.7 million, the ADB said.

Last year, ADB supported Georgia by disbursing a $100 million loan to contain the spread of the pandemic, mitigate the impact on businesses, and protect the livelihoods of the most vulnerable, a $200 million policy-based loan for addressing public financial management and social protection systems, and a $2.5 million grant to increase the COVID-19 testing capacity and procure medical equipment.

Georgia’s tourism-reliant economy has been hit especially hard by the COVID crisis and lacks the resource-extraction or manufacturing base that has helped cushion the blow in some other ex-Soviet countries.

The country started its economic recovery in April this year when it recorded 44.8 percent year-on-year growth. Economic recovery continued to gather pace in May and June as the country eased the majority of the restrictions it had imposed to curb the coronavirus pandemic, businesses reopened and tourists tentatively started to return.

Georgia’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 12.2 percent year-on-year in January-July after contracting 5.8 percent in the same period last year. The country revised its economic growth forecast to 7.7 percent from a previous projection of 4.3 percent in 2021 amid signs of economic recovery.

The ADB’s COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support (CARES) Programme has provided budget support to Georgia’s government and helped to fund its comprehensive anti-crisis plan. That included tax deferments for more than 4,000 small and medium-sized tourism businesses and subsidised loan repayments for at least 2,000 small and medium-sized hotels.

The CARES package was developed in close coordination with the International Monetary Fund and other development partners as part of a coordinated effort to help Georgia tackle the COVID-19 crisis.

Georgia joined the ADB in 2007 and the bank has since become one of the country’s largest multilateral development partners with committed loans amounting to $3.92 billion and technical assistance projects worth $28.9 million. The ADB’s key development priorities in Georgia include expanding trade, creating more jobs, and combatting poverty by developing economic corridors.