Tbilisi. In June 2013, the Parliament passed a temporary legal ban restricting non-Georgian citizens (including Georgian entities with a foreign minority shareholders – "foreigners”) from purchasing or inheriting agricultural land until December 2014— this ban has now been amended.TI Georgia challenged this ban in September 2013 for being vaguely worded, discriminatory, unconstitutional – and likely to have a negative effect on the development of the agricultural sector. TI Georgia’s case, Mathias Huter v Parliament of Georgia, was heard by the Constitutional Court in January 2014 and a judgment is currently awaited. "This temporary ban was justified by the government as necessary to give themselves time, "to develop a uniform state policy on agricultural land ownership and organize an integrated land cadastre by December 2013”, as stipulated in the then law. The government has missed this deadline and is now seeking to extend this deadline to 30th November 2014 in the new draft law".

Source:transparency.ge