We are doing an immense job today to develop technologies; our objective is to introduce technologies in the country on a mass scale. I would like to stress that Georgia has a very good economic growth indicator today; we have managed to achieve this progress precisely by the expanse of construction and growth in fields of agriculture and tourism. But, we have seen what has happened to those successful European countries, where the state was developing only by the expanse of one field.
After a certain stage, the economy had overheated there and the crisis started. The countries where high technologies had been developed had withstood this stage; these countries are the Scandinavian countries – Estonia, Germany, and Austria, where there is an industrial base of manufacturing technologies.
Hence, for my country, the main thing is to develop the technological industry as well. We are distributing computers to five year old children. We are now entirely modifying the examination system in schools and universities. It is a major reform which we are now preparing according to which, the technical subjects become very important in schools.
We have already taken a couple of steps in this direction during the past years. We are creating several dozen technical schools across the country, encouraging the youth to apply to the technological and engineering fields that create innovations, which might create know-how for the world and their own country.
A vivid example of our progress is the fact that from scratch we have assembled a fairly modern military industry in the last four years; not only have we started to engineer business planes and business jets, but we produce civil planes as well, along with this military production.
We are now building a technological university in Batumi, on the Black seaside, and we will finish it already by September. It is a 200 meters high building. This building will be the highest building in Georgia and the Caucasus.
There will be a hotel and administration for invited professors located in the main block, while in the lower floors there will be auditoriums, laboratories and a campus. The building will also have its own small attraction on the top, so that it gives a special touch to it all. We will invest huge sums in this university in order to develop the technologies.
I assume that overall there will be several hundred million invested together with the U.S. government so that the Batumi Technological University is able to produce the world’s top specialists in few years.
We are now in the final stage of negotiations with the technological faculty of the University of California, as well as with several other universities in order to make a consortium of American universities, which will constantly invite professors. Likewise, we have to invite our top professors from abroad and manage to significantly boost the situation in this direction.
I say to every young person that the future belongs to technologies, I am a lawyer myself, I am proud of my profession, but I think that being a lawyer, a specialty of international law, is important but not as important as the study of technologies. I say this to every young person, say it to my son, though he does not need to be told, he studies it anyway. He did not want me to say it, but he got 2300 in the SAT exams, a score that only 0.3 percent have in the world. I think he is smarter than me, but he lags in other things.
Many Georgian youth have switched to the scientific fields. I was visiting several universities the other day and I was stunned to see how much the people are geared towards actually creating something new.
This university will be one of the main outcomes for me personally, including what our government builds and transfers to the next generation. It will be a technological university and a technological enterprise as a whole. The creation of the industrial technological base is very important for our country and for the entire region. We want Georgia to also become a technological center.
I would very much like to have relationships with any of your universities. I want you to come for internships and through the students exchange programs. The professors used to arrive here; we would travel abroad and then together created a common product afterwards. I want us to create technical parks and labs together; to work on many issues together, which might eventually be beneficial not only for our country, but for all of humanity.
I am convinced that Georgians will surely create something like this. I would like to tell you that we have created the first Georgian-American battle planes. We had a great engineer, Kartvelishvili, in this field.
A great number of new technologies, innovations have been created by Georgians in different countries. We now want our countrymen to create new technologies in our country. I know that many of them study at American universities. I know as well, that some of them go to your universities.