On April 3, Georgian Post made a statement in response to TI Georgia’s Report on the Competition Policy: The Georgian Postal Service Market published on February 27. Georgian Post claims that the study does not reflect the actual situation and is purportedly directed at tainting the business reputation of Georgian Post, the state owned company. We therefore would like to further comment on the above statement.

TI Georgia has been monitoring the developments taking place in the postal market for a number of years. The monitoring identified the government's attempt to restrict competition and create favorable conditions for Georgian Post vis a vis private companies: the Minister of Finance’s Order # 30 of January 25, 2013, as well as the Decree # 40 issued by the Georgian Government on January 6, 2014, and the draft law on the Post, which is still under development, served exactly this purpose. TI Georgia has made a number of statements dealing with these problematic tendencies. In addition, TI Georgia resorted to court requesting the annulment of the above Decree issued by the Minister of Finance. We won the case in all instances and achieved the nullification of the order. We have also appealed to the Constitutional Court of Georgia requesting the annulment of a similar Decree of the Government of Georgia and would have inevitably won the dispute had the government not abolished its own Decree.

It has been a few months since the Georgian government started working on the legislative package, the original draft of which also granted a favorable position to Georgian Post. We have been proactively engaged in the improvement of the bill as a result of which the original version underwent significant changes. Currently, the process is put on hold inter alia due to the inclusion of Georgian Post in the privatization list.

It is these very attempts to restrict competition that are examined in the TI Georgia’s study released in February 2015. Given the circumstances, the claims of Georgian Post challenging the findings of the study are incomprehensible. We reaffirm the accuracy of the findings as well as all our statements, so much more that the wrongfulness of the attempts on the part of the Government have been confirmed by court rulings as well.