Before the current insolvency reform, Georgia’s legislative framework regulating insolvency proceedings fell short of meeting international standards – it did not meet either creditors’ or debtors’ needs and failed to offer incentives to the insolvent companies to choose rehabilitation as their optimal strategy for resolving financial difficulties.

High and rising levels of foreign currency indebtedness have been an important topic in Georgia over the past several years. To address this issue and protect borrowers from currency risks, the National Bank of Georgia (NBG), as well as the Georgian Government have implemented regulations to hinder excess indebtedness. Let’s have a look at the timeline (Figure 1) of recent lending regulations and the accompanying monetary policy measures and observe their impact on changing lending patterns in the Georgian economy.

Around two years ago, ISET-PI published a blog article on the problem of over-indebtedness in Georgia. The article stressed the idea that due to notably increased access to finances, an aggressive marketing campaign provided by financial institutions, and poor socio-economic conditions throughout the country, Georgians (particularly the poorest) are mired in a swamp of debt, from which they are unable to escape.

An individual living in Kutaisi took a 1500 USD real estate secured loan from one of the microfinance institutions in 2011 and had to pay 75 USD interest rate for the following 6 months. The purpose of taking this loan was to finance treatment of her child. She was unable to cover monthly payments and prolonged the term to 10 month, but failed to cover this payments again and was fined several times.

The tradition – and, in most cases, the only way – for Georgian entrepreneurs to finance their businesses and ideas is bank lending, so-called debt financing. However, this source of financing is very limited for start-ups and early-stage businesses, due to the high level of risk involved, the unavailability of collateral assets, and high loan interest rates, which are almost unaffordable for companies that do not generate sufficient returns yet.