Avtandil Tsereteli is President of Group Samgori, a diverse business enterprise with units ranging from cigarette manufacturing to food processing and distributing to such new ventures as a regional airline.

At elaborate ceremonies in New York City this summer Group Samgori was presented with the award as one of the globe’s top practitioners of quality control and assurance, an area of company emphasis.

With more than 2,000 employees and business interests ranging from cigarette manufacturing to supermarkets to a start-up airline, beauty parlors, ice-cream, health insurance, security companies and a list that goes on and on, Avtandil Tsereteli is one of the very biggest private leaders in all of Georgia. But as far as he is concerned, commerce is just getting started in Georgia.

“When a real middle-class appears in Georgia, every business will be successful. But unfortunately, the economic policy of the country does not assist the creation of the middle-class,” says Tsereteli. “What we need is a government that will stop the smuggling of goods across our borders and that will create a tax policy to encourage local manufacturing,” adds the President of Group Samgori. Already, Tsereteli is doing his fair share of taxpaying, at $37 million last year one of Georgia’s top contributors to the national budget.

Avtandil Tsereteli was trained as an agricultural technologist and he has obviously made the most of his education. This past summer he and his company were awarded the top prize from an international jury rating companies for their programs of quality control and assurance.

But as a major player in a nation’s economy he has serious concerns about the way the government’s economic policies are shaped. And he complains about the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the Washington based lending institution which casts a large footprint in Georgia. “We are a developing country and the IMF is trying to establish laws of a developed country in Georgia. Why does IMF ask for sequestration every time our government fails to meet the state budget plan? When we have a budget of $600 million, the IMF takes a particular percentage from there. If the budget plan is not met, it can’t take anything, right? When sequestration happens, it is counted as a plan fulfillment and the IMF takes its money anyway.”

Beyond irritation at an IMF which insists on loan paybacks even when Georgia is short of funds to meet the lenders demands, Tsereteli has another message for the West: “We need help securing the borders of Georgia. There is no actual border with Abkhazia, Ossetia, no border in southern Georgia. That would help the problem of smuggling, of course. All the smuggling now comes from Abkhazia. There is no customs in Zugdidi. All this has some political meaning, of course. If you have a customs office in Zugdidi, that will mean you admit that Abkhazia is not yours. If you have a customs office in Tskhinvali, Ossetia, the meaning will be the same, that Tskhinvali is not yours.

And then pointing to the strengths of his nation, Tsereteli asks, “Why should there be economic problems here if there is a correct policy? Georgia has everything, starting with good soil and finishing with gold. But the main thing is our intellectual strength.”

At Group Samgori there is obviously a “correct” policy. “All the units of our business make a good profit and pay their own way,” says Tserteli matter-of-factly. The company president is a man who likes to stick with facts and you can tell he knows exactly what he is doing.