At the session of the Government of Georgia, the Prime Minister, Irakli Gharibashvili, stated: "The number of international travellers to Georgia in the period from October 2012, including April 2015, reached 13.5 million. In the last two-and-a-half years, we registered a better result than in the previous seven years. We see a lot of positives here."

took interest in the accuracy of the statement.

According to the information of the Georgian National Tourism Administration, the number of visitors to Georgia increased by 3.5% in the first six months of 2015. This number was 2% in 2014 and 26% in 2013.

Irakli Gharibashvili compared the number of visitors who entered Georgia from October 2012 until May 2015 to the number of the previous seven years. There were 13,453,875 visitors to Georgia from October 2012 up until May 2015. In regard to the previous seven years (from October 2005 until October 2012), the total number of visitors to Georgia was 12,885,377.

The Prime Minister uses the period October 2012 to April 2015 from the time of the Georgian Dream government’s coming into power until present day. Obviously, the new government cannot claim credit for the number of visitors coming to Georgia in 2012 as the elections took place towards the end of the year, in October 2012. Therefore, a more logical comparison would be to take the number of international visitors coming to Georgia in 2013. This particular comparison illustrates that there were 12,743,407 visitors to Georgia under the rule of the incumbent government whilst the number of visitors was 13,887,438 during the previous seven years (2006-2012). Thus, there were 1,144,031 more visitors to Georgia in the period of 2006-2012 than in the period of 2013 to April 2015.

It must be noted that the calculation of international visitors to Georgia and making an analysis of respective trends thereto is incorrect. Whether or not Georgia has a positive trend in terms of its rising number of international visitors is defined by the annual growth in terms of percentage. For Georgia, there has been a high annual percentage growth since 2005 which increased the number of visitors to the country from 500,000 to 5.5 million.

 Number of International Visitors to Georgia and its Growth Rate (%) in 2006-2015

As illustrated by the graph, beginning from 2006 the lowest growth rates in the number of visitors to Georgia are registered in 2014 and 2015.

For a broader picture, we can analyse the average annual growth (%) in the number of visitors to Georgia in the period of 2006-2012 and the growth rate since the end of 2012; that is, from the time of the change of the government. In the period of 2006-2012, the average annual growth rate of visitors to Georgia was 35% whilst the growth rate was 10% in 2014 and 2015. Of course, a country cannot possibly have such an enormous increase every year, as that which occurred in 2012 (57%), but when the number falls from 26% to 2%, this, as well, cannot be considered as a positive trend.

Looking at the annual growth rate of international visitors to Georgia enables us to identify the numbers of international visitors to the country. Comparing the last two years to the previous seven years (especially taking into account an almost zero growth in the last year) does not give us any important information and is solely a manipulation of numbers. Since 2006, the lowest growth rates in the number of visitors to Georgia were registered in 2014 and 2015. Therefore, the last two years, and especially 2014, have not been too much of a success in this regard.

Irakli Gharibashvili compares the number of visitors who came to Georgia since the new government took power (October 2012 to April 2015) to the number of international visitors for the previous seven years and takes October 2012 as a point of departure which is wrong.