Written by Tom Deehan on Jan 5, 2016. Posted in Incentive News

The country of Georgia is launching a new film incentive

In an effort to attract international productions the Eastern-European country of Georgia is set to introduce a brand new 20% cash rebate in 2016, with an additional two to five percent available for productions that include certain aspects of Georgia. The qualifying minimum expenditure for the rebate will be set at roughly GEL723,000 (USD300,000).

The Head of Export and Distribution at the Georgian National Film Centre, David Vashadze explains: “we think that this decision is crucial for the Georgian film industry. There are many film production companies looking for new and very diverse territories. Low bureaucracy and a film friendly atmosphere are very important, but without financial incentives the possibility of attracting a big number of foreign productions is not very high.”

He continues: “the cash rebate scheme is an independent project of the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development, while the funding of GNFC is coming from the Ministry of Culture and Monuments Protection. According to this, the growth of funding for national films as well as for co-productions is not dependent on the scheme we are going to implement in 2016”.

This incentive isn’t the first to be in operation within Georgia, as the Regional Film Fund of Adjara was launched in 2012 to offer a 20% cash rebate to national productions filming in the semi-autonomous region on the border with Turkey.

While the lack of international productions filming in Georgia is set to change with the introduction of this incentive, the country does have a lucrative television industry however with popular shows including Friends of my Wife/Chemi Tsolis Dakalebi and In the City/Shua Kalakshi.