Irrigation Strategy of Georgia for 2017-2025

The Irrigation Strategy for Georgia is a national sectoral strategy of Georgia for the period of 2017-2025. Its main objectives are to describe the complex environment in which irrigation system rehabilitation, operation, and maintenance will take place over the next ten years; and to indicate the directions that Georgia intends to take in managing its water resources, rehabilitating and modernizing its irrigation systems, and organizing, managing and funding irrigation services for farmers.
According to the Strategy, the considerable unexploited potential of groundwater will be studied and measures devised to enhance private groundwater development for irrigation, particularly in conjunction with drip irrigation technology, which is expected to expand to cover as much as 10% of irrigated area by 2025. Georgian Amelioration will establish a professional unit to evaluate and prioritize more than 100 potential projects on hydrologic, economic, and financial grounds, creating a high quality list of pre-qualified of projects for potential financing. The estimated $361 million required for this work will come from funds allocated by Government of Georgia and from international assistance agencies. Rehabilitation projects will include modernization investments to allow improved system management and more effective and efficient service delivery. Major investments in this category will target improved water measurement systems and control structures, along with upgraded management information systems and staff development. Farmers will be consulted extensively at each stage of project design and implementation to ensure compatibility with local needs and practices. A new unit will be established to mobilize farmers and facilitate consultation and dialogue. Local level rehabilitation design will be carried out in close cooperation with local farmers, with Water User Organization (WUO) development proceeding in tandem with the rehabilitation process. LTD Georgian Amelioration (GA) will strengthen its Asset Management Unit and will take a more proactive stance in monitoring and assuring the quality of rehabilitation implementation. Georgian Amelioration will also continue to operate as a single private corporation over the medium term, taking advantage of the financial discipline and results-orientation which typically characterize such entities. However as long it is publicly-owned, GA will aim to operate at a financial break-even point, covering all operation and maintenance, administrative, and depreciation costs, with return on capital (profit) set to zero. Interest on private capital could be included in the rate structure, with the approval of the regulator, if this possibility were to emerge in the future. GA will retain its present decentralized structure, with the regional divisions operating under the umbrella of a single unified national corporation to minimize overhead costs. To create a governance structure more appropriate to a corporation, the Ministry of Agriculture will establish a broadly-constituted supervisory board for GA, which includes a variety of accomplished professionals from both governmental and non-governmental sectors. The primary local level organization responsible for managing water delivery to individual farms will be a farmer-governed WUO. Development and passage of a new WUO law will be necessary to enable this. Retail water delivery may also be undertaken by large commercial farmers who contract with GA for bulk water supply or by municipalities who have organized to provide local irrigation water delivery services. To facilitate this two-part irrigation management structure, GA will, in consultation with local farmers, subdivide all irrigation systems under its purview into smaller contiguous units on the basis of rational hydraulic boundaries. These units will typically be on the order of 1,000 hectares each, though they may be larger or smaller depending on local conditions. An independent regulator will establish a bulk water tariff for each system or group of systems operated by GA. Tariffs will be set to cover reasonable system-specific main system operating and maintenance and depreciation costs. According to the document, the quality of service can be regulated through contract provisions in agreements between GA and local level management entities such as WUOs, which include penalties for failure to deliver agree-upon irrigation services. The designated regulator would provide external adjudication for resolving disputes between GA and its clients. A third regulatory need, that of ensuring adequate maintenance of infrastructure assigned to a WUO for use, can be accomplished through provisions in service contracts, coupled with periodic joint inspections.
Poverty alleviation, particularly in rural areas, is among the objectives of the measures provided under this document.
The Georgian Parliament, Government of Georgia, Ministry of Agriculture of Georgia, GA, WUOs and the external regulator will be responsible for the implementation of the Strategy. The document provides for a specific action matrix for the majority of the implementing agencies.