On June 27, 12:00 p.m., at Tbilisi Marriott Hotel, Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association conducted a presentation of the Report reviewing legislation regulating the process of reception, allocation and monitoring of international aid in Georgia. The study was carried out with the financial support of Open Society Institute and Open Society – Georgia Foundation.
According to donor countries’ deliberation, made at the Brussels Conference in October, 2008 our country will receive 4.55 billion USD as an international aid in the course of 2008, 2009 and 2010. The agreements concerning the part of allocated to date aid are already signed.
The aim of Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association was to reveal existing flaws and problems in the normative acts regulating international aid, to study efficiency of current monitoring and supervisory mechanisms in Georgia.
The study of legislative basis revealed that on one hand, there exist special procedures on international aid, though, on another hand, these regulatory norms are contradictory and inaccurate to a certain extent. Some of the procedures are not completely prescribed by the normative acts. This concerns e.g. issue of registering grants. Such flaws in legislative basis may pose significant problems in practice.
Likewise, the analysis of legislation on the state budget management revealed non-systemic activities of supervisory bodies that are the main barrier for their efficient activities.
Despite the adoption of the new law on Chamber of Control (what is supposed to be a positive step), a unified controlling system failed to develop: there occur a duplication of various supervisory bodies, important financial resources stay beyond the audit of the Chamber of Control, no norms exist for regulating partnership among the supervisory bodies.
Even a positive initiative of introducing preliminary audit should be considered as a problem so far, as “Efficiency Audit” will be enacted only from January 1, 2010.
According to the conclusion made by Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association, today, in terms of existing legislative norms, it will be difficult for the state to study and monitor expenditure of the part of funds allocated following the Brussels Conference, which was not incorporated in the budget. This increases the risk of irrational and purposeless expenditure of money.
Representatives of the Ministry of Finance, The Chamber of Control, NGOs and international organizations attended the presentation which was continued with interesting discussion.
Irina Lashkhi
Human Rights and Good Governance Program, Budget Transparency direction