Located in Europe, on the coast of the Black Sea, Georgia is geographically well-positioned as a gateway flanked by Europe and Asia. Georgia is seamlessly situated for easy access to most major European, Central Asian and Middle Eastern markets and has unrestricted trade agreements with most of these markets. Along these lines, Georgia already claims the majority of the conditions needed to become a regional financial and business center.
Does Georgia have a strategic location and access to the investment market?
Georgia’s abundant trade regimes provide investors with a promising chance to not only access the country’s 3.7 m residents, but the broader region’s marketplaces, as an outcome of the absenteeism of taxes and import tariffs. Up to the present, Georgia has signed FTAs (free trade agreements) with CIS countries that include Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, as well as its neighbors, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Armenia.
In terms of border control, all overseas travelers to Georgia enjoy highly accessible and service-oriented customs policies and administrative protocol. There is almost no custom duty, with 90 % of goods being exempt from import tariffs, with no measurable limitations. The regular time for customs allowance is presently around 15 minutes – one of the loosest and most competent in the CIS.
Does Georgia guarantee the rights of investors?
According to Tax Code of Georgia, if a company produces goods intended for export market, it can apply for a license called “Internal Processing Regime” from the Ministry of Finance. This license will grant the company a right to import raw materials deprived of paying import/customs tax and VAT on these materials. The Company only has to present a bank warranty (amount of bank warranty is sum of import tax and VAT). After the dispensation of goods, in case the product is exported, bank warranty is unconfined. If some of the products will be vended in the territory of Georgia, the company will have to pay import and VAT of raw materials that were used to make those goods.
