Georgi Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi, exclusively to VK
The parliament of Georgia passed in its first reading an amendment to the Constitution, according to which a new city called “Lazika” is going to appear in the country. The legislative body decided to anchor this idea in the Constitution; the idea is that the future authorities will be obliged to build such a city if they don’t want to breach the Constitution. Forms of taxation, information about economic agents etc. will be determined by a special law adopted by the qualified majority voting in the parliament.
At the initiative of the President Saakashvili, the city should be built within ten years between Poti and the Inguri river, i.e. near Abkhazia. Moreover, the authors of the amendment affirm that half a million people will live in this city!
In order to let our reader realize what an ambitious project it is, it is enough to remind that the population of Georgia amounts to a little more than four million people. A million and a half of them live in Tbilisi, which is the only city with a population exceeding one million in the country. Two hundred thousand people live in Kutaisi, the second-largest city in the west of Georgia. The population of other Georgian cities (Batumi, Poti, Zugdidi, Gori, Telavi) is less than 100,000 people. Suddenly, according to the idea of the authors of the “promising idea” mentioned before, a city with a population of half a million people, with its own avenues, skyscrapers and all the necessary infrastructure for a modern city will be built in swampy area where there is not a single house.
Naturally, this raises two questions: “who will pay for this?” and “who will live in the new city?” The leaders of the ruling party “United National Movement” answer unanimously the first question, that: “investors will come there because a new city will be quite attractive due to its taxation.” It is easy to realize that Lazika is a project for a free economic zone on the shore of the Black Sea.
“Why can’t we create such a zone in the existing seaports?” – the opponents ask a sensible question.
“The reason is that all the land and the buildings of these ports were privatized long ago, and the investors will have to invest their funds in private capital assets, and Lazika will be public land, which we will be able to use in order to raise the capital of the investors,” the representatives of the ruling party answer.
“Lazika will be a city with a high degree of autonomy. It will be given the right to determine the rules of economic relations, and these rules will be as attractive as possible. That’s the strategy which was used in Dubai before that city became a world trade center,” Pavle Kublashvili, one of the leaders of the UNM, said.
It is almost clear how this project will be financed (though many experts consider this scheme to be utopian, taking into account Georgia's real conditions and indeterminable conflicts); however, as for the population of the city, the authorities prefer alluding and not speaking straight out about their idea.
In reality, the issue is that the population of the agriculture regions of Western Georgia will move willingly to Lazika. VK has already mentioned the deplorable condition of the agriculture of Georgia. Experts of the ruling elite affirm that public investment in the rural zone and agricultural subsidies won’t change the situation; according to them, the main reason for the recession in the Georgian agricultural sector is labor productivity, which is extremely low. This fact, in its turn, is associated with the lack of fertile soil and the atomization of the agricultural industry, meaning there aren’t favorable conditions for organizing large industry with enough agricultural lands for creating big farms able to produce competitive products in Georgia (in particular, in the west of the country). The territory is divided into such small parts that it can hardly be enough to maintain its owner’s family. What should he do? The existing cities are overflowing, and house prices are extremely high, even taking into account the current world crisis.
However, if a new quickly-developing city with vertical mobility and new vacancies appears in the country, the residents of the rural zones will certainly move there, miserable villages will empty, and this fact will create the conditions for establishing new large and competitive households. In any case, the main author of this creative project (according to public opinion, this idea was offered to Mikhail Saakashvili by Kakha Bandukidze, a well-known businessmen) hopes for such results.
Besides, Lazika is conceived as the “City of the Sun”, which will attract not only Georgians but also Abkhazians who live close to it. Maybe this assumption is quite naïve, even more naïve than the schemes of Tommaso Campanella, the great Italian. Nevrtheless, Lazika has got one clear advantage: it is a peaceful project, and one of its aims is “to bring Abkhazia back” solely by means of an example of successful development.
