Karlo Amirgulashvili, Head of the Biodiversity and Forestry Department of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture, said that the Agency would complete work on the renewed conditions by the end of this year. According to him, as of today, the country has a license to extract fir-tree cones and all of them are subject to revision.

As Amirgulashvili stated, at the request of the Ministry and with the involvement of the National Environment Agency, a survey was conducted on approximately 5,000 hectares of land in Racha, based on which it will be possible to determine what resources are in the region and what quotas should be set.

The auction will be announced next year with new conditions and new prices. Amirgulashvili explains that most of the licenses were issued in 2009.

According to the Customs Department, in 2020, 35,315 kilograms of fir-tree seeds were exported from Georgia to the EU countries, including Denmark, the Czech Republic, France, Austria, the United Kingdom and the United States. 14,964 (1.7 million GEL) kilograms of fir-tree seeds were exported from Georgia in 2019, and 51,161 kilograms (3.2 million GEL) in 2018.

To be informed, the process of collecting cones in Racha is in September. Fir-tree cones are found in Samtskhe-Javakheti region, however, most of them - in Racha.