Japan has earmarked 220 billion yen of its coronavirus stimulus relief to go toward helping its manufacturing companies move their production plants out of communist China and back to Japan or to other countries.

As the founder of Anaklia Development Consortium, leader of the political union Lelo for Georgia, Mamuka Khazaradze said, “this is a new window of opportunity to attract serious investments to Georgia. “A concrete example is the port of Anaklia and the free economic zone in Anaklia,” he added.

When asked about the assessment of Khazaradze’s initiative, expert at the Center for European Policy Analysis, Margarita Assenova said: “Now is the time for countries like Georgia to seek such economic and investment opportunities”.

“China lost international trust and its international reputation is severely damaged. Not because the virus came from China, but because the Communist government of China lied about it. Many countries will be looking to relocate their companies from China to other countries or bring them back home — to help their own economies in the recovery period and to diversify sources of supplies. Now is the time for countries like Georgia to seek such economic and investment opportunities. Georgia has highly qualified work force and the cost of production is still low, compared to Western Europe. I think the Georgian government and business community should try their best to make a better offer to Japan or other countries and companies that have production operations in China”, Assenova told the Accent.