Parliament begins to discuss the amendments to the 2019 draft budget in committees. According to the changes, budget expenditures increases by 223 million GEL and reaches 13 billion 300 million GEL. The costs of some ministries are also rising.
Opposition criticizes the Government, saying that no one is thinking about the population and the money is not spent purposefully. Members of the parliamentary majority do not consider the changes to be alarming.
“This year we much earlier done the identification of the risks that might have to appear towards specific projects and the absorption would not be high. That is why from the beginning we started to work on the projects, which were considered for the following years and which was possible to carry over to current year. That"s why, we are postponing certain projects for the next years”, - told the parliamentary secretary of the Finance Minister George Kakauridze to “Kurieri”.
""These changes are stemming from different processes, which - I will repeat again - do not affect economic policy. There are changes in infrastructure projects that do not change their whole funding. These are not changes that should be criticized”, - says Roman Kakulia, the Head of the Parliament"s Committee on Sector Economy and Economic Policy.
“I believe that the Government will be able to design new infrastructure projects for the next three months without corruption, then announce tenders and achieve even worse result. Naturally, there will be additional pressure on the GEL mass, which automatically means more depreciation of the GEL", - said Akaki Bobokhidze, a member of the “European Georgia - regions” faction.