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Compiled By Messenger Staff
Thursday, May 19
Bakradze met with Head of UNDP in Georgia

The Chairman of the Georgian Parliament met with the Head of UNDP in Georgia and the Ambassador of the Netherlands to Georgia, 24 Hours reports.

The current UNDP Parliamentary project "Strong Parliament in a Consolidated Democracy” and the future perspectives of cooperation was the main theme of discussion during the meeting..

Jamie McGoldrick and H.E. Pieter Langenberg reaffirmed that the UNDP and the Government of the Netherlands will continue to support the Parliament for improvement of Parliamentary functioning in the future as well.

According to McGoldrick the cooperation with the Parliament began in 2004-2008 by launching the program "Strengthening the Efficiency and Transparency of the Parliament” that proved to be fruitful and expressed his hope that the current project would also be successful.

"I think that the cooperation with the Parliament which began from 2004 has yielded a big result and we are sure that the new project will facilitate the strengthening of democratic reforms in Georgia and will improve the functioning of the Georgian Parliament in general”- McGoldrick stated.

The current project "Strong Parliament in a Consolidated Democracy” aims to support the development of parliamentary capacity in its four areas of constitutional responsibility, namely: representation, lawmaking, setting policy directions of the country and executive oversight which has been launched by the initiative of UNDP a year ago is continued with the financial assistance of the Government of the Netherlands. With the help of 700 000 USD allocated from the Embassy of the Netherlands the budget of this initiative reached 1 million USD.



Further changes in Georgia’s constitution

The Parliament is discussing further constitutional changes which concern moving the parliament from Tbilisi to Kutaisi, Akhali Taoba writes. After the 2012 parliamentary elections, it will change location and move to Kutaisi in west Georgia. The author of the new constitutional changes is President Mikheil Saakashvili. According to released information on May 16, MPs will visit Kutaisi where they will hold their first meeting.

Information was also released on selling the current parliament building in the centre of Tbilisi in which Arab, Greek and Chinese investors have already expressed an interest.