Speaker Papuashvili: Donors must disclose amounts of funds benefiting governments returned to their countries of origin

“Recently, we have heard multiple times from some donors claiming that part of foreign funding was being spent in favour of the government,” Parliament Chairman Shalva Papuashvili posted on Facebook.

As Papuashvili notes, any grant that enters the budget serves the population, not the government.

“Recently, we have heard multiple times from some donors claiming that part of foreign funding was being spent in favour of the government. I would not advise any donor to enter this topic for two reasons:

Any grant that enters the budget serves the population, not the government. Unlike these same donors, every tetri (Georgian national currency) of this expenditure is public, with its targeted spending being verified (I remind you that Georgia is the #1 country in the world in budget transparency).

The second and main point is that it’s no big secret that donors are instructed to return more than half of their budget to their countries of origin. So, wherever any donor speaks about spending their funds toward the government, they should also disclose how much of this money they have returned to their own country, ultimately benefiting their own government,” Papuashvili writes.