Source: Investment activities in Georgia, State Statistic Department, 1999
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Most Exportable Agricultural Products.
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Georgian Wines . Georgia is known as the birthplace of viticulture and winemaking and has 5000 years of wine culture. The rich land, hot sun and hard work have developed about 500 varieties of wine in Georgia.
According to the State Department of Statistics exports of different types of Georgian wine during first nine month of the 2001 made up 18186,5 thousand USD which is 7,8 percent of the total Georgian exports.
At the end of the 20 th century, the collapse of the Soviet Union has caused an economic decline in Georgia, which negatively affected the Georgian wine sector. To be more precise - The overall territory of vineyards has decreased by 50%, (1990 - 112,6 thousand hectares, 2000y - 60,5 thousand hectares). This tendency was mainly caused by the following reasons: lack of enough funds among farmers to purchase chemicals, technical devices and machines for vine cultivation, also huge numbers of farmers had to convert their vineyards into land to grow edible products such as corn, vegetables, and grain.
In addition, from the mid 1990s the tendency of vineyard rehabilitation has been quite dynamic, still the total area of ​​vineyards is far less than it was even 20 years ago.
Table # 1 Tendency of wine sector development for the last ten years
Sector
Measure
1981-85 average per year
1986-90 average per year
1990
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
Total area of ​​vineyards
(1000)
Hectares
137,4
116,1
112,6
94,2
94,0
72,0
70,0
60,1
60,5
61,5
Production of grape
(1000)
Tones
768,0
712,0
691,0
160,0
342,0
...
