Georgia reports record-number of vehicle transits in 2022 through its territory to reach Russia

A record number of heavy trucks such as trailers have driven along the highways of Georgia in 2022 primarily from Armenia and Türkiye to Russia.

According to Kommersant, the Georgian State Treasury published the relevant data on January 23, reporting that 448,335 trailers drove through the middle corridor in Georgia in 2022, a stark increase from 332,070 vehicles in 2021.

The department informed, that on average 1,300 trailers were on Georgian roads in 2022, while this number increased to 1,520 in December only, indicating an increasing dynamic.  

Having assessed this situation, the government of Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili increased the transit fee per trailer from 200 laris (approx. $75) to 350 laris (approx. $131) starting in June. Budget revenues from transit increased significantly following this decision, from 66.4 million laris ($24 million) in 2021 to 128 million laris (over $48 million) in 2022.

The transit from Türkiye to Russia is of concern to the western partners of the Caucasian country. Recently, The New York Times published an article on this topic with CNN reported Christiane Amanpour asking the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen,  to comment on the behavior of Georgian authorities in relation to Western sanctions, to which she declined to comment. 

Nevertheless, the Head of the ruling Georgian party "Georgian Dream", Irakli Kobakhidze, attacked the journalist, demanding the Georgian diplomacy to take "an adequate response to the lies". He said that Georgia does not supply goods to Russia in circumvention of sanctions.

Kobakhidze was operating with the figures of "slight growth" of export of Georgian products to Russia - by 7% in 2022. He pointed out that if Georgia were violating the sanctions regime, exports would increase exponentially. It should be noted that Christian Amanpour, like the authors of the publication in the NYT, spoke not about export, but about transit.

On the other hand, Georgian Finance Minister Lasha Khutsishvili made it clear at a special briefing to journalists that Tbilisi "exchanges information daily with the USA and the EU", so that "nobody has any reason to suspect that sanctions are not properly observed in Georgia".