Shevardnadze Guarantees Safe Business for UES in Georgia

(Tbilisi, August 11, 2003, Civil Georgia) – “The Russian company has been guaranteed that its business in Georgia will be profitable,” President Shevardnadze said on August 11, while commenting on the entry of Russian Unified Energy System (UES) into the Georgian energy market.

A contract between American AES and Russian UES stipulated that the Russian company would acquire 75% of the shares of AES-Telasi’s electricity distribution network, two 600 megawatt power plants of AES-Mtkvari, power lines for transiting electricity t!
o Turkey and Armenia, and the rights to manage the Khrami I and II power plants.

The deal was protested by the political opposition parties, who fear that monopolization of the Georgian energy sector by a Russian state-owned company might lead to mounting Russian political pressure on Georgia.

“Someone might ask why we did not bring this company to Georgia nine years ago. The reason is because UES would have never agreed to buy Telasi back then because it was unprofitable. The sale of Telasi has become possible only after the U.S. company, AES, modernized the entire electricity network, thus creating a precondition for the entry of the Russian company,” Shevardnadze said in his radio broadcast today.

Shevardnadze stressed that the U.S. company invested about USD 240m in the Georgia’s energy sector, “however AES went bankrupt and had to sell some of its enterprises throughout the world.”

While commenting on the allegation made by fo!
rmer Minister of State Property Management, Mikheil Ukleba, i!
n which a confidential agreement between AES and the Georgian authorities prohibited the sale of the U.S. company’s Georgian shares to neighboring countries, Shevardnadze said there existed no secret agreement.

“There were just certain paragraphs of the agreement that were not able to be published,” he said. However, the President refrained from specifying the details of this confidential agreement.

This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)