Economic Press Monitor

IN THIS ISSUE:

Giorgi Bajelidze, head of Center for Monitoring and Studying of Procurements, declares that in state procurements, “the key challenge is simplified procurements, i.e. purchases, which are conducted without tender”. “As a rule, they are characterized with quite high corruption risk”, he specifies.

According to World Health Organization (WHO), because of diseases and decline in productivity, caused by consumption of tobacco, Georgia’s GDP annually loses 2.4% that makes up about 825 million lari.

Referring to research of the UN Development Program of 2017, WHO declares that “raise of tax on tobacco in Georgia will lower in 15-year prospect an indicator of smoking of tobacco by 27%”.

Giorgi Kadagidze, ex-president of National Bank of Georgia, indicates that within “the main initiative” on arrears’ write-offs for part of citizens, “process of negotiations, legal framework, announcement of the initiative, elementary arithmetic, economic effect and today even the technical implementation have shortcomings”.

Kadagidze posted the mentioned on his Facebook page and noted: “Unfortunately, this with accuracy of 100% reflects quality of our country’s governance “.

Strength is in Unity (united opposition) accuses Georgia’s president elect and ruling team of bribery of voters and appeals in this regard to court, the newspaper reports. The opposition regards that write-off of debt of 600,000 citizens to financial organizations is a bribery, the article specifies.