Roman Gotsiridze

Roman Gotsiridze (Georgian: რომან გოცირიძე; born on December 16, 1955) is a Georgian economist and politician.

Roman Gotsiridze was born on December 16, 1955, in Gali, a town in the then-Abkhaz ASSR.

He was enrolled in 1974 for his compulsory military service in the Soviet Army and became an Industry Planning student at Tbilisi State University, from which he graduated in 1982.

After graduating, he worked in the staff of TSU, before becoming a docent in the university's Department of Industry and Agricultural Economy in 1989.

He is a Doctor of Economic Sciences.

He has served as a member of Parliament in 1990–1992, 1992, 2004–2005, and since 2016, as well as Deputy Prime Minister in 1992–1993 and President of the National Bank of Georgia in 2005–2007.

One of Georgia's longest-standing politicians, Roman Gotsiridze first joined the country's Supreme Council during the first post-Soviet elections of 1990, being elected as Representative of the Didube District as a member of Zviad Gamsakhurdia's Round Table-Free Georgia coalition, and was a signatory of the April 1991 declaration of independence.

Though joining the political sphere in 1990, Gotsiridze remained closely tied with the academic field and continued teaching at TSU until 1995.

During the 1990 legislative election, Georgia's first multiparty and free election since 1919, Roman Gotsiridze co-founded the Democratic Center, an anti-Communist political organization that joined the Zviad Gamsakhurdia-led Round Table-Free Georgia bloc, and ran for the Didube Majoritarian District, defeating the Communist Party nominee.

A member of the Supreme Council, he was one of the signatories of the Act of Restoration of Independence of April 9, 1991, and sat in independent Georgia's first Parliament.

During his term, he often found himself opposed to other MPs because of his free market positions, including supporting privatizations, while the nationalist government of Gamsakhurdia supported a more centralized, state-run economy.

At that time, he aligned himself with Shevardnadze as the latter was facing the rising influence of Tengiz Kitovani and Jaba Ioseliani, two warlords responsible for the 1991-92 coup.

On December 3, he was appointed as Deputy Prime Minister in the cabinet of Tengiz Sigua, in charge of the country's struggling economic portfolio.

As such, he faced a difficult situation with Georgia in the midst of a civil war and a chaotic socio-economic situation following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Gotsiridze was notably in charge of overseeing the transfer of Soviet-era state-owned economic facilities to the Georgian government.

He was a strong proponent of the price liberalization and privatizations and was regularly opposed by Avtandil Margiani, an influential fellow deputy prime minister in charge of supervising agricultural policy.

As Deputy Prime Minister, Roman Gotsiridze oversaw the creation of the kuponi, a temporary currency meant to replace the Russian ruble.

Though the state had no existing foreign currency reserve, he secured a loan from the Dutch government to make the country's initial deposits for membership in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

He was also involved in negotiations with Russia over a settlement of the war in Abkhazia.

After the government's overthrow in 1992, he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister in the cabinet of Tengiz Sigua and was put in charge of the government's economic portfolio.

His term was marked by an economic collapse caused by the fall of the USSR and the Georgian Civil War and Gotsiridze secured Georgia's first international loans and rolled out the kuponi, the first national currency.

On January 2, 1992, the Supreme Council was abolished during the 1991-92 Georgian coup d'état by the Military Council of the Republic of Georgia, which overthrew Gamsakhurdia.

In the October 1992 parliamentary election organized by the new government of Eduard Shevardnadze, Roman Gotsiridze was once again elected through the electoral list of the October 11 Bloc, an opposition coalition led by Nodar Natadze.

He also briefly served as President of the Economic Freedom and Private Property League of Georgia, a free market NGO, as well as chairman of the Supervisory Board of the investment hedge fund Georgian Capital in 1995-1996.

In 1998, Roman Gotsiridze was appointed Head of the Budget Office in Parliament by Speaker Zurab Zhvania.

As such, he took a large role in writing the annual budget and his office served as a watchdog over the Ministry of Finance.

He regularly criticized what he thought to be government waste, including the large budgets given to regulatory agencies.

He was also opposed to the idea of creating a free trade zone in Adjara and regularly raised concerns about the Adjarian Autonomous Republic's lack of financial transfers to the central government.

Often disagreeing with the government's own financial figures, he accused the Shevardnadze government of closing its eyes on a large network of tobacco smuggling that cost the Georgian state a large share of revenues.

Wary of Georgia's energy dependence on Russia, he was also reluctant to give credit to the Shevardnadze government for the South Caucasus Pipeline.

He was critical of a 2002 bill that would have allowed the President to reschedule the debts of state-owned enterprises and called for drastic expenditure cuts to avoid IMF sanctions.

In opposition to the presidency of Eduard Shevardnadze, he joined the Republican Party and was elected to Parliament in 2004 after the Rose Revolution.

A year later, he was appointed as President of the National Bank of Georgia, focusing his term on increasing foreign currency reserves, increasing international banking presence in Georgia, fighting off the growing Russian financial presence in Abkhazia, and curtailing inflation.

His failure to keep the inflation rate below 10% has been attributed as a reason behind his resignation in 2005.

Since 2014, he has been a professor of economics at the International Black Sea University.

In 2016, Roman Gotsiridze returned to the political scene by being elected to the Parliament as a member of the United National Movement.

When the party split following the creation of European Georgia, he became the leader of UNM's parliamentary faction, making him the highest-ranking opposition leader in the legislature.

He oversaw his party's struggle against the Georgian Dream-led government, including in its response to the adoption of a new constitution in 2018, the 2019-2020 political crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

He was reelected to Parliament in 2020 but refused to accept his seat and boycotted the legislature until May 2021.

In February 2023, he left UNM and has since remained as an independent MP.