Mayor’s Office receives loan approval
By Tea Mariamidze
Thursday, September 4
The Tbilisi Mayor’s Office received approval from the Sakrebulo to take a 30 million GEL loan on September 3. The loan is necessary to fill the current deficit in the Tbilisi budget. Narmania states that the Mayor’s Office could not take the loan from the central government, and the body will address private banks instead.
Several days ago, Tbilisi Mayor Davit Narmania informed that his office’s budget deficit has reached 25 million GEL. He stressed that the current budget was being amended to recover the deficit. In the case of failure, the city administration would have to take a loan.
Narmania stated yesterday that if the Mayor’s Office manages to accumulate the necessary funds from other projects, they will not take the loan.
“Otherwise we will address commercial banks and take the loan from the bank that will offer the lowest interest-rate,” Narmania said.
Members of the United National Movement did not approve of this loan. According to them, the body could apply to the central government to receive the money from the state budget. UNM members stress that the Mayor’s Office will have to pay a high interest rate if they receive the loan from a private bank.
However, Narmania and Finance Minister Nodar Khaduri explained that such expenses were not foreseen in the current state budget and thus the loan could not be issued from the state budget.
Narmania openly accused the previous city administration in misspending budget money and appealed to them, as well to account for the bonus figures they took while being in office.
“Otherwise, Tbilisi City Hall will publish a list of those employees who used to receive high bonuses,” Narmania said.
“We will inform the public about those employees who used to receive high bonuses. Some of them received more than a GEL 10, 000 bonuses in one month,” Narmania added.
Responding to the situation, member of the United National Movement Mikheil Machavariani stated that the current situation in terms of the deficit is being worsened by the Georgian Dream coalition.
“The Tbilisi budget was confirmed by the Sakrebulo that was led by the coalition. The situation in terms of the Tbilisi budget is one of the signs of the current government’s irresponsible economic policy,” Machavariani said.
