March 11, 2014 - The World Bank Group organized a series of consultations (November 2013 – March 2014) to seek views on itsCountry Partnership Strategy (CPS) for Georgia for 2014-2017scheduled for discussion by the Board of Directors on May 8, 2014. The consultations were held with the representatives of civil society, think-tanks, private sector, donor organizations, parliamentarians, and government officials at all levels. These meetings provided a platform for the WBG to tap into the experience and opinion of a broad range of stakeholders, and to hear their ideas on how the WBG can help Georgia achieve its development objectives. While the WBG was preparing its CPS, the Government was in parallel finalizing its development strategy “Georgia 2020: Socio-Economic Development Strategy”, for which it also organized a series of consultations around the country with different stakeholders.
Throughout the CPS consultations process, the WBG team addressed the discussion points raised by the participants of consultations and pledged that it would continue its dialogue with all stakeholders, including parliamentarians, to get greater clarity on what would work best in the country considering available resources. The WBG team also emphasized that the next phase of support would see an enhanced focus on ensuring the quality of implementation on the ground.
Several MPs have been invited to the consultations, but most vocal was Mr. Davit Onoprishvili, Chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee of the Parliament of Georgia, and one of the Bank's main counterparts in the Parliament. In his opinion, the WBG’s program is well anchored in the Government’s Socioeconomic Development Strategy-2020 released recently. His comments were mostly around the figures of extreme poverty in the Government's own strategy. Mr. Onoprishvili thinks that based on the resources the country has, the government together with its partners, could make a stronger outline for extreme poverty reduction, which is important both from political and social perspectives. According to him, the objectives that are set in the strategy, the inclusive economic development in particular, allow for this.
