Lelo’s Datunashvili: Price study commission concludes with no results; government lacks political will and economic vision

“The millionaire composition of the parliamentary commission examining prices has concluded its work with, as expected, zero results,” stated Tazo Datunashvili, a member of the Strong Georgia-Lelo party.

He remarked that the commission’s outcome underscores that “the government lacks both the political will and the economic vision to provide meaningful solutions for the citizens of Georgia.”

“Instead, in the near future, we should expect the appointment of party directors, collective farm-style, across various districts, overseeing collection points for domestically produced goods. I have not invented a single word of this; it was used at the commission’s concluding session and appears in that 104-page monument to utter idiocy that the commission calls its conclusions.

This commission has taken no concrete action, put forward not a single specific proposal that would actually bear on reducing prices, which was, after all, the entire purpose for which it was created. The commission spoke vaguely of structural changes, of supply chain issues, of transport problems, as though the citizens and entrepreneurs of Georgia were unaware of any of this. There was not one concrete proposal, not one actionable measure over which the state could exercise genuine influence: no reduction in excise duties, no lowering of other taxes, no easing of the tax burden, no reduction in the cost of public services; nothing of the sort. On the contrary, what we received were utterly vacuous, incompetent recommendations, pitched at the level of someone with no grasp of basic economics.

This commission and its work make it abundantly clear that the government has not only no political will, but no economic vision and no intellectual capacity to offer the citizens of Georgia anything of real worth. The commission’s conclusions have once again confirmed what we said from the very beginning. In a country where 80 per cent of all staple food products are imported, where domestic production barely exists, and where structural obstacles abound, it is absolute nonsense, a barefaced lie and an insult to the Georgian people, to suggest that the government has any meaningful leverage over price control beyond reducing the tax burden.

What we have received is precisely the opposite: inflation up by 7.5 per cent, and prices rising accordingly across all food products; fuel prices up by roughly one lari; cascading price increases across every service and product; electricity prices up by 30 per cent, with further rises across all services and products now to be expected on top of that. We have also seen increased charges for public services. That is the real legacy of this commission’s work.

This three-month exercise in grubby propagandist adventurism cannot be allowed to pass without political accountability. Full political responsibility for this shambles rests, from start to finish, with the individual who styles himself Prime Minister of Georgia, Irakli Kobakhidze. For once in his life, he ought to summon the political courage to stand up and admit that his venture has ended in complete and utter failure,” Datunashvili declared.

For context, the temporary parliamentary commission examining the pricing structures of food products, medicines, and fuel published its conclusions earlier today.