Prime Minister of Georgia addressed Georgian diplomats participating in the Conference of Ambassadors

Irakli Garibashvili focused in his keynote speech on his new initiative of designing a socio-economic policy, restriction of online casinos and medication pricing.

“Under my instructions, we are already working on designing a new socio-economic policy, which will be made public soon. It is aimed at making very effective and efficient, productive steps. We also have very important plans related to the creation of new employment opportunities, adjustment of social policy, which is currently catastrophic and devastating, as we are simply losing our generations. People got used to unemployment and got victimised in real sense by this wrong, unhealthy social policy. It should change. I started to openly talk about it. Restriction of online casinos is also related to this goal. I wish to thank our Parliament and MPs as a draft law was passed with a third hearing in an accelerated manner today. Online casinos engage hundreds and thousands of people, who need to be shifted to other engagements. For your information, let me say that socially vulnerable people spent 1.5 billion on gambling. These are the socially vulnerable people, who got engaged in gambling because they had nothing else to do, failed to get employed and because the system simply scared them. They failed to work out of fear of losing social allowances. Malpractices like online casinos, gambling, drug addiction and others are their current occupation. One of our main directions will be reduction of prices on medication. We are actively working on this and expect to have a quick impact ultimately in the nearest 1-2 months. Afterwards, we should continue with our very important work. Under my instructions, we already developed 10-year plans and this is not a template promise. These are very detailed, specific and elaborated plans, which were designed by each line ministry. Every public institution worked in a very productive manner during the past 6 months and came up with long-term sectoral development plans broken down by annual specific vision statements. Our common goal should be progress to be reached by 2030 and even before that. Of course, we will advance every year. We should at least double our economy. Our main challenge and main difficulty to be overcome - which was failed by previous governments - is to overcome poverty and unemployment. It is our main ambition, our main motivation and we should deliver this. More jobs and greater prosperity needs to exist and stability with a long-term peace is most essential for this. It is ensured and guaranteed in the conditions of our rule”, - said the Head of the Government.