Miracle in the Caucasus
It seems almost impossible. Three years ago Georgia was deep in crisis, with runaway inflation and a war raging with Abkazia. Most foreign investors wouldn't touch the country with a bargepole. But today, somehow, Georgia has GDP growth and inflation figures which would be envied by many industrial countries. And, with its first treasury bill auction, the government has just taken the first step toward creating western-style capital markets.
"Nobody believed that this small country could have made progress so fast," reflects Hunter Monroe, the local IMF representative. Just a few years ago, "the government had nearly become irrelevant to the economy. There were questions over whether the government could take on these problems".
These achievements and, perhaps more important, the fact that Georgia is in the heart of the world's next most promising oil belt, is beginning to attract a new degree of international attention.
