The Parliament, at the plenary sitting of the autumn session, discussed the Draft Law on Public Procurement for the I reading and approved it with 82 votes, introduced by the Parliament Secretary of the Government, Vakhtang Bachiashvili.

Per his elucidation, the amendments to the Law envisage the postponement of the effective date of the basic provisions from January 1, 2024, to January 1, 2027.

As the reporter noted, the new Law was adopted in 2023, the complete enactment of which is scheduled as of 2029, while the basic regulations should become effective as of 2025.

According to V. Bachiashvili, the Law on Public Procurement is one of the significant legal acts in regard to the EU approximation, under which, the applicable state procurement regulatory provisions are exposed to cardinal reforming, namely, by modifying the approaches and inculcating new procedures, instruments and institutions of public procurements.

“In line with the assessment of the European Commission, Georgia, by adopting the Law on Public Procurement, has achieved significant progress, however, the legal framework needs to be brought in compliance with the EU legislation. Hence, the effective implementation of the public procurement reform requires further approximation with the EU, which takes respective activities. Correspondingly, providing the wide scale of the scheduled changes, as well as in view to ensure the uninterruptedness of the legal scopes, it is expedient to establish January 1, 2027, as the effective date of the basic provisions of the Law instead of January 1, 2025”, - the reporter stated.

Pursuant to the legal package, the respective amendments are to be introduced to 33 current Laws. The legal package is submitted for expedited consideration.