Paper Title
Foreign Trade of Georgia and East and Central European States Comparative Analysis
Abstract
After disintegration of the Soviet Union and subsequent collapse of the traditional system of foreign trade, former
soviet Republics and now newly Independent States faced acute problems, which had a tremendous negative impact on all of
them. Formation of the new economic relations was a tough process, in which former “Soviet Bloc” States had a preferential
position; before long they chose the European course of development. The Course of joining the European Union was
declared by Georgia after some period and only in 2014 was signed the Association Agreement.This Agreements turned out
to be quite challenging for Georgia as it imposes huge obligations:in the field of Foreign Trade among others.What is the
current situation,? And how can we benefit from the Free Trade Agreements? These are the topics of major interest for the
present article, in which we use the techniques of comparative analysis. The Analysis is focused on several aspects of foreign
trade, such as export geography, major exporting products, changes in foreign trade, based on the assumption that
Association Agreement would positively influence export potential and scales of export on the EU market. In addition, Trade
Intensicification Index in all the above mentioned States is computed in order to find out the export potential utilization on
the major markets – the EU, CIS and NAFTA. Trade Intensicification Index allowed us to compare the export potential
utilization of all the three States. The research led us to the following conclusions: association agreement didn’t support
creation of new export products, major exporting groups in every State are stable, the TII revealed that the EU market export
potential is best utilized by Eastern and Central European States and the same is true about Georgia on NAFTA.
Keywords - European Union, export markets, export potential, trade intensification index.