TeliaSonera concerned about its employees in Georgia

Telecoms operator running business in crisis area on a minimum staff

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”The safety of our employees takes priority over any other matter”, says Irene Krohn from the TeliaSonera headquarters in Stockholm.
      One of the largest teleoperators in Georgia, Geocell, with a staff of 300, belongs to the Swedish-Finnish telecommunications service provider TeliaSonera. However, no Finnish or Swedish employees are permanently living in the country.
      ”At present, our office in Tbilisi has only a minimum staff”, Krohn reports.
      The company has evacuated most of its employees, advising them to stay at home. Whether or not somebody has been wounded since the outbreak of violence, Krohn does not know.
      ”Our network in the area is naturally under huge loading, but it is working”, adds Krohn.
      Krohn notes further that it is too early to discuss how the war will affect TeliaSonera or the operators it owns in Caucasus and in the surrounding areas.
     
Apart from TeliaSonera, Finnish companies have only minor activities in Georgia. Nokia has a sales office with a couple of employees in Tbilisi.
      ”There is nothing to worry about, they are all right”, a representative of Nokia reported.
      Trade between Finland and Georgia is relatively modest.
      ”The value of Finnish exports to Georgia amounts only to some millions of euros”, reports analyst Seija Spiridovitsh from the Finnish export promotion organisation Finpro.
      However, from the standpoint of trade and industry, Georgia has been a kind of success story in recent years.
      In 2006, the World Bank Group named Georgia the world’s best economic reformer on its Doing Business survey, for having made considerable economic improvements to many areas of its business regulations.
      ”The same reforms that in Estonia took 10 years were carried out much faster in Georgia”, reports Jaakko Kangasniemi, the CEO of the Finnish Fund for Industrial Cooperation (Finnfund).
      Finnfund is a Finnish development finance company that provides long-term risk capital for private projects in developing countries, including Georgia.
      ”So far, Finnish companies have not paid particular attention to Georgia, and I do not believe that any of them would go there at this stage, at least not very soon”, Kangasniemi believes.
     
Finnish companies operating in Russia have not been affected by the war. The majority of large Finnish companies have some operation in the country.
      A total of some 700 Finnish companies are operating in Russia.
      ”Those who are engaged in business are not interested in politics. The aim is not to contemplate whether it was Georgia or Russia who started the war. The target of companies is to make profits for their owners”, outlines Mirja Tiri, the CEO of the Finnish-Russian Chamber of Commerce, interpreting the feelings in the association’s Moscow office.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Stubb voices optimism over Georgia deal (12.8.2008)
  Finnish and French foreign ministers hold talks with Georgian President (11.8.2008)
  President of Georgia does not believe in military conflict with Russia (12.10.2007)

Links:
  TeliaSonera
  Finpro
  Finnfund
  Finnish-Russian Chamber of Commerce
  The World Bank: Doing Business: Georgia is This Year´s Top Reformer

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