Privatization is the only means to generate the capital needed to rehabilitate the sector. Georgia's transportation and communications infrastructure are in very poor condition, due to a lack of investment. Parliament has set an agenda to start the privatization of the telecommunications industry, although there is still resistance to the plan and Parliament needs to draft implementing legislation. While approximately eighty percent of the Georgian economy is agricultural, crops spoil in the field because farmers either cannot get their produce to market or must pay production costs that drive market prices above those for food stuffs. Over the past two years the government has instituted dramatic reform measures that have halted the economic free-fall.
Unemployment remains high, however.
The lack of essential production inputs, the low level of investment, and exorbitant prices for critical commodities have slowed economic reform and recovery. While a significant parallel economy has developed and benefits the top tier of the urban population, living conditions are generally very austere. The rural population survives largely by means of subsistence farming. While both the United States and the EU are putting greater emphasis on institution-building assistance, Georgia continues to depend on humanitarian aid from both sources. The two greatest impediments to significant progress in the observance of human rights have been the unsettled situation in Abkhazia and the resistance on the part of certain criminal justice officials and organizations to embrace reform initiatives supported by the new constitution and parliament.