The National Bank of Georgia Offered the Legal Regulation Handbook to the Financial Sector

The National Bank of Georgia Offered the Legal Regulation Handbook to the Financial Sector

28 July, 2015

Legal Regulation - it is the publication which presents the legal acts that regulate the activities of the National Bank of Georgia, as well as activities of financial sector. Today the presentation of publication was held at the National Bank of Georgia. Representatives of the financial sector attended the event. Giorgi Kadagidze, Governor of the National Bank of Georgia presented a publication personally and spoke about its significance.

"It is small but very important project. Up to 300 normative acts were amended during the last 5 years. Some of them were revised, some were amended completely. The financial sphere is very dynamic; there are constant amendments to the normative acts and in order to ensure the sustainability of financial sector our normative acts should be very close to the international standards. The involvement of the commercial banks is very important as well because they provide daily information where should be improved the particular regulation, where it should become more comfortable for the customers. It is constant process and today this process has been summarized in some way and we have published it as a handbook and I think it is very significant event" - Giorgi Kadagidze, NBG Governor stated.

The documents given in this book are dated as of July 1, 2015. The publication also contains the laws related to the activities of National Bank or the functions it conducts. The electronic version of the book is available on official NBG web-site:  https://www.nbg.gov.ge/index.php?m=640 

At the end of the presentation Giorgi Kadagidze answered the questions of journalists concerning the amendments to the Law on the National Bank of Georgia initiated by the Parliament. According to him stripping the National Bank of its banking supervision functions is not consistent with the Constitution and with the association agenda.

"We have seen the final version of the law adopted by the Parliament and I would like to say once again, that even from a legal point of view the bill cannot stand up to any criticism because there are a lots of unclear articles, that can read in different ways; this may lead to serious problems in the future. In addition, it is not consistent with the Constitution and with the Association Agenda. The bill was heavily criticized by our partner international organizations. It is clear that, the purpose of this law is to restrain independence of the Central Bank and weaken the role of the President as a guarantee of checks and balances. This is not denied even by its initiators.

The adoption of the bill will significantly damage the banking sector as a whole, it has already affected investor confidence and in the end will impact each citizen of our country.

I think the President's veto is yet another opportunity for Members of Parliament to reconsider their decision.

We had active consultations with the President. Our position is publicly known. This law is very dangerous. It cannot be adopted in this form. This is not only our position. None of self-respecting economist can positively assess this law,"- said Giorgi Kadagidze.