Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) H E Jasem Mohamed Al Budaiwi
Tbilisi: The GCC countries maintain a very important and integrated relationship with Georgia and this can be witnessed from the number of flights operated between cities in GCC and Georgian capital Tbilisi, remarked Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) H E Jasem Mohamed Al Budaiwi. He is in Tbilisi attending the two-day Tbilisi Silk Road Forum, which opened yesterday.
Speaking exclusively to The Peninsula after speaking at the Trade4Future panel session on the opening day at the forum, Al Budaiwi said: “The GCC countries and Georgia have a very important relationship. We have signed a joint action plan in 2017, where we laid down the subjects and the issues that we need to engage ourselves in like political dialogue, economical discussion, investment, education, tourism, health care, food security, all sorts of issues that are important to both sides.”
The number of tourists and flow of goods between the two sides have seen some major uptake. “Now, the relationship between both sides have developed and integrated in so many ways. You can check the daily flights from the Gulf cities to Tbilisi and you would really know exactly how integrated we are. The number of tourists, the amount of goods flowing between the two sides is an indication of how integrated both sides are,” he added.
On the importance of the Tbilisi Silk Road Forum, he said that “the forum is a great opportunity for officials from different parts of the world - from the US, Europe, Asia, GCC - to discuss very important issues of trade liberalisation, taxation, FTAs, energy security, that we we hope to have a common ground regionally and internationally in order to open not only one Silk Road, many silk roads to benefit everybody.”
