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Kutaisi budget project caused dispute

December 22, 2016
Shorena Kakabadze, Kutaisi

City council has not yet approved the Kutaisi budget for 2017. However, it has already become topic of dispute and protest for the local civil society and opposition members of the city council. Local organizations of the nongovernmental organizations state the next year budget is very important issue and it will be crime to approve it without intensive discussion with wider society.

Representatives of the Kutaisi office of the Transparency International Georgia state it is important to discuss the budget project in details. The society shall be maximally engaged in the process and the plan of the government (to adopt the budget without any remarks and recommendations) shall not be implemented. 

“They want to adopt the 2017 budget without substantial discussion of several issues which need to be considered carefully. Initially local authority uploaded the budget project on the website of the Kutaisi City Hall for so called “transparency”. However, it cannot change anything and is insufficient. Later, after we protested the draft project and made statements, they initiated the discussions, however we have some remarks and suggestions which shall be taken into consideration through detailed discussion. NGOs have concrete recommendations and the budget shall be approved only after consideration of these remarks,” said coordinator of the Kutaisi organization of the TI-Georgia. 

Other NGOs also have remarks. Namely, they have questions about reduction of the property tax that is not endorsed by the Kutaisi City Hall.

“There were remarks about this question but of course we cannot accept it because the fact is not correctly interpreted. How the property tax was reduced when this year budget received 5 650 000 GEL as property tax; next year we expect to get 10 700 000 GEL. That means, we do not have problems, just the opposite, we develop,” Kutaisi Vice-Mayor Konstantine Kavtaradze said.
Representatives of the local government said priority of the next year budget is infrastructural development. Like last year, in 2017 the city budget will spend 10 million GEL on infrastructural projects.

As for administrative costs, in accordance to the initiative of the central authority, Kutaisi too significantly reduced the administrative costs for the past 2 years and further amendments are planned in future. However, we will learn in a few days, how it will affect the main financial document of the city. The local legislative body shall approve the budget by December 25. 

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