The Prime Minister of Georgia in the interview to Imedi TV highlighted further economic development as the “primary factor” in reversing emigration and reintegrating Abkhazia and Tskhinvali regions. He named ensuring return of emigrants as “one of the key goals”.

“I am sure that in a few years, somewhere after three-four years, the process of returning immigrants to Georgia will begin. The main key to this is the development of the economy.

The country’s economic lag relative to Western Europe had historically driven emigration.

We took France, Great Britain, and Greece as examples during the presentation of election programme this week, and the lag before 2012 with these countries was about four times. It was 2.5 times behind Greece, and four times behind countries like France, Great Britain, and Italy.

I expect the domestic economy would halve the gap by 2028, leading to a potential decrease in emigration. Our gap with France, Italy, and Great Britain by 2028 will be less than double. The smaller the economic difference between Georgia and Western European countries, the less migration we will have.

Other European nations had faced similar challenges, Lithuania and Latvia, after joining the European Union, saw their populations decrease by more than 20 percent - Lithuania by 600,000 and Latvia by 400,000. This was due to the economic disparity between the countries and Western Europe.

Georgia’s population has remained relatively stable since 2012, our Government had practically managed to maintain the number of the population.

The figure is almost identical, with a small decrease. The number of people in our country decreased by 221,000 under the previous administration”, - said Irakli Kobakhidze, comparing it to the current population, which he said remained around 3.7 million.