APRC conducted a Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) on insurance reform in Georgia and provided recommendations on policy options for developing a sustainable agricultural insurance market in the country.

In 2014, the Government of Georgia (GoG) piloted its crop insurance program mandating that it form the basis for a wider rollout of crop insurance to Georgian farmers. On average, 94% of insurance premiums were initially subsidized by the government. In 2015, the GoG launched another pilot crop insurance program with a considerably lower level of premium subsidies – 55% on average. The Agricultural Projects Management Agency (APMA) of the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) is implementing this pilot project.
Along with this pilot project, the GoG works on the development a sustainable long-term crop insurance policy and regulatory framework. In the near future, the Government will decide on a concrete model that will be used to manage the agricultural insurance process in Georgia.
Deloitte Consulting LLC contracted APRC to conduct a Regulatory Impact Assessment of insurance models and recommend the best policy option.
The study analyzed two policy options:
• Option 1 (Baseline Scenario): the government continues with the current pilot project of agricultural insurance. APMA will manage the program.
• Option 2 (Alternative Scenario): the government establishes the National Agricultural Risk Management Agency (NARMA) – a public-private partnership in which the organization and management of the national agricultural insurance scheme will be distributed among public and private actors.
We compared the two options across a number of different dimensions, adopting a multi-criteria approach based on both quantitative and qualitative analysis.
The main conclusion is that the introduction of a public-private partnership might have higher potential for the long-run development of the agricultural insurance market in Georgia. However, this is conditional on the willingness of all parties involved to commit to this long-run process and invest the required resources (financial and intellectual).