Sebastian Molineus, World Bank’s Regional Director for South Caucasus, has concluded his mission in Georgia and shared a farewell video message.

In his address, Molineus expresses his gratitude for the opportunity to serve as the World Bank’s regional director in Georgia, describing it as an honour and a privilege.

“Gamarjoba dear friends and dear colleagues!

I’ve done many videos, interviews and media appearances these past four years here in Georgia. However, today is probably one of the most difficult appearances that I have to do. Why? Because I have to say goodbye, Nakhvamdis. It is really a bittersweet moment, both for my family and myself. Sweet, because we will be able to return to Washington to our home, see old friends, and for me to work on an important agenda for the World Bank, which is to help the decarbonization of the transport sector to help with the energy transition globally to work on digital development, and responsible mining all exciting opportunities for the globe and for the World Bank to further engage and to reform and to move forward. Bitter because my family and I will have to leave Georgia, which has truly grown dear to our hearts over these past four years.

Now, if I look back, it has been truly an honor and a privilege for me to serve as country director here in Georgia over the last four years. But really, I am a part of a long-standing support program that the World Bank has provided to Georgia starting off with the early 1990s, the decade of transition from a planned to a market economy, to the 2000s and 2010s. The decades of foundations building institutions and a strong macroeconomic policy framework that have helped spur the growth that we see now and has served to half poverty over those years to now this current decade that we’re living in which I have had the privilege of leading personally, and working on tremendous challenges, the COVID period and all of the support that we provided to government, the connectivity agenda, both within Georgia in terms of digital where we have a remarkable project called the Log-in Georgia project to connect 5000 villages and almost half a million people to the connectivity agenda across the middle corridor and transport building the East West highway and starting the East West expansion all the way to a connectivity agenda that will connect Georgia to Europe via an energy and a digital undersea cable. Now, these are all truly remarkable projects that we have been able to support the government on and perhaps in addition to also the human capital agenda, moving a bit away from infrastructure to supporting and investing in the people of Georgia, and better education and health outcomes.

Now, colleagues and friends, I am incredibly, incredibly thankful, first and foremost, to the people of Georgia who have hosted me and have treated me like a son. Thank you!

I am incredibly grateful to our clients and our government counterparts, who have been nothing but remarkable and have been strong in their vision of reforming their country and moving it to a European future.

I am incredibly grateful for the international financial institutions, the embassies, the development partners that we’ve been able to collaborate with these past four years.
And finally, I’m incredibly grateful to both the private sector and civil society that really have served as a backbone of many of the reforms and it provided invaluable inputs and feedbacks into our programs.

So, in closure again, I would like to from my heart, thank you for having welcomed us like family and we look forward to coming back and visiting and becoming part of this wonderful community and family again.

Didi Madloba and Gaumarjos Saqartvelos!” Sebastian Molineus said.