Parliament Approves New Board Member of National Bank

TBILISI – The Parliament of Georgia have approved Koba Gvenetadze as a member of the Board of the National Bank of Georgia on Wednesday.

81 members of Parliament voted in favor of former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economist Gvenetadze , none voted against.

He will replace Giorgi Kadagidze on the Board of the National Bank of Georgia (NBG), whose seven-year term of office expired in late February.

It will be up to the seven-member board to pick new president of the central bank among its members, which will then require approval from President Giorgi Margvelashvili.

Georgia’s President Giorgi Margvelashvili nominated Gvenetadze on the position and emphasized that he meets all the criteria.

Before joining IMF, Gvenetadze served on various posts in the Georgian government; he was Deputy Finance Minister in early years of 2000s.

From early 2008 till late 2009 he served as IMF resident representative in Azerbaijan and he was IMF resident representative in Kyrgyzstan in 2010-2014.

At the Budget and Finance Committee hearing in last month, Gvenetadze, showed his own visions on National Bank‘s main activities.

According to Gvenetadze, it is rather important government to increase the reliance on domestic currency.

Gvenetadze believes that the best way how to keep inflation stable and low is communication process between society and economic agents. From his point of view this process should be definitely implemented and deepen afterwards.

During the parliamentary committee hearings, Gvenetadze indicated that he was more in favor of keeping financial supervisory agency within the NBG rather than removing it, as in July 20165, the Georgian parliament passed the bill to remove the banking supervisory function from the country’s main Bank and transferring them to a separate agency.

By Tamar Svanidze

Edited by Chloe Diamond