GEORGIA Country Profile

Environment, Natural Resources and Extractive Industry

Individual Corruption

As about half the population lives below the poverty line, some individuals turn to illegal logging and smuggling for a livelihood. Although this may be considered small-scale logging and petty smuggling, it has increased in intensity and may have serious consequences for the forests.

Business Corruption

According to Global Integrity 2008, business inspections by government officials to ensure environmental standards are being met are not carried out in a uniform and even-handed manner.

The oil and gas industries are mired in secrecy. There are some concerns about the transparency of some companies' disclosure of payments to the Georgian state as well as the volume of resources that have been extracted.

Political Corruption

Georgia is endowed with abundant natural resources - oil, gas, magnesium, copper, gold, vast forests and mineral water - which serve as present and potential revenue. Transparency is hampered by the state agency that oversees the extractive energy industry, the State Agency for Regulation of Oil and Gas Resources (SAROGR). SAROGR is supposed to make public all information pertaining to state revenues: the extracted volumes, the terms for exploration and extraction rights granted in Georgia, etc. However, this is not done in a clear, systematic way and SAROGR keeps no statistical information.

Frequency

EBRD & World Bank: BEEPS Georgia 2005:
- 2% of the companies surveyed identified bribery as frequent when dealing with environmental inspections.