The purpose of this scope of work was to: 1) identify and analyze the major policy, regulatory, and institutional constraints limiting the growth and development of the agricultural sector in Georgia; and 2) recommend in detail how EPI can apply its resources to address these constraints and factors.
As per direction from the EPI team, we focused on issues that affect high value agriculture, given the value chains the EPI project has selected to focus on: fruits and vegetables (fresh and processed), hazelnuts, and wine. Through a combination of desk research and interviews, we determined that there is not a significant number of existing policy constraints in the agricultural sector that are value chain-specific. The constraints we identified and determined to be relevant to EPI’s objectives and value chains were mostly cross-cutting. One major policy-related issue surfaced, which was land tenure and the related policy and regulatory measures and their implementation. In this paper, we suggest that addressing this is essential to future development and competitiveness of the sector. The other issues this report addresses are: taxation, food safety, and intellectual property rights. These, we note, are considerably narrower in focus than the issue of land ownership.