What the mineral rights regime covers
Acquiring rights over mineral resources in Georgia rests on the institution of the use licence, regulated by the Law on Licences and Permits. The three central themes of this page are: how an application for issuance by auction is handled, when a licence may be issued directly, and how an obtained licence is transferred to another person. Together these three instruments form the legal framework through which a mineral asset moves on the market.
The auction application and documentation
When a licence is issued by auction, the seeker submits a written application, which must indicate which type of use licence the seeker requests. The application must be accompanied by extracts from the state registry for private law legal persons and individual entrepreneurs, copies of identification documents for natural persons, and certified copies of founding documents for public law legal persons. A document confirming payment of the licence fee must also be submitted; the amount of the fee, the procedure for its payment to the budget and the procedure for refunding overpaid amounts are determined by the Law on Licence and Permit Fees.
An application for participation in the auction is accepted for no less than 15 days from the announcement of the auction; the final deadline for accepting applications is set in each case by the licensing authority. If the seeker withdraws from participation before the deadline expires, the fee paid is subject to refund — a guarantee that reduces the seeker's risk. The documentation rules thus create a special balance: the list of documents is precisely determined according to the seeker's legal form, and the refund procedure is established by law itself.
Cases of direct issuance
With the consent of the Government of Georgia, the mineral extraction licence is issued directly to a holder of a water supply licence — for the extraction of underground fresh water for supplying consumers with drinking water — and for tourism and recreation purposes, for the extraction of underground mineral waters for medicinal mud and/or medicinal baths. The private property case deserves particular emphasis: on a privately owned land plot, a licence for the extraction of underground fresh water for commercial purposes is issued directly, with the right to extract no more than 5 000 (five thousand) cubic metres per year.
An interested seeker submits a written application to the licensing authority on the volume, location and purpose of extraction; it is accompanied by the document corresponding to the legal form (a registry extract, a copy of an identification document or founding documents), in the respective case a document confirming the water supply licence or ownership of the land plot, and also a receipt for the fee. Unlike the auction, direct issuance proceeds on the basis of additional grounds — an existing water supply licence, a tourism-recreation purpose or private ownership — and precisely these additional grounds constitute the condition of the lawfulness of the direct route.