President Salome Zourabichvili presented the parliament with two candidates for choice to fill the two remaining seats in the Board of the National Bank – Giorgi Bakradze and Dimitri Japaridze.
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Economist Giorgi Bakradze has been an adviser to the President of the National Bank and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee since 2010. He has the status of guest lecturer and professor in several universities, where he gives lectures to undergraduate and graduate students. Giorgi Bakradze received his education in Georgia and the United States.
Doctor of Business Administration Dimitri Japaridze is the director of the Institute of Economics and Business of Ilia State University and an independent member of the Supervisory Board of Ziraat Bank - Georgia. From 2013-2016, he received scholarships at the universities of Columbia (USA), Limerick (Ireland), Kentucky (USA), and Cambridge (United Kingdom), as a Visiting Researcher.
The appointment of board members of the National Bank became a subject of controversy between the president and the Georgian Dream. The ruling party wanted Salome Zourabichvili to nominate the acting Minister of Finance, Lasha Khutsishvili as one of the candidates.
According to the announcement made by the Political Council of Georgian Dream on June 7, there was an agreement with the President that if she presented Lasha Khutsishvili to the Parliament as a candidate for board members of the National Bank, the Parliament would not override the President's veto on the “Law on National Bank”. The president refused to present Khutsishvili. As the administration explained, Salome Zourabichvili had suspicions regarding his impartiality, which were reinforced by “the government's persistent insistence on nominating Khutsishvili, and constant pressure and blackmail on the president.”
On June 13, the Parliament overcame the veto on the amendments to the Organic “Law on National Bank” with 82 votes to 9. The parliamentary majority did not share the president's position that the legislative changes will lead to gross interference in the governance of the constitutional body and be perceived as an attempt to limit its independence.
The amendments will bring about a new executive role in the Board of the National Bank - The First Vice-President. The First Vice-President shall perform the duties of the President of the National Bank in the absence of the latter, and in case of the former's inability to exercise his authority, the Board shall assign one of the Vice-Presidents to perform the duties of the President.
Opposition deputies maintain that the real reason for these changes by the Georgian Dream is to establish an iron grip on the National Bank.
The candidates for membership of the Board of the National Bank are nominated by the president and elected by the parliament with majority rule for a 7-year term.
