The lawmakers from the ruling party criticized the government-proposed 2009 draft budget saying it failed to deliver the ruling party’s pre-election promises.

“The 2009 draft budget fails to protect the most vulnerable population; the second, it fails to provide keeping of our promises and the third, the submitted draft budget fails to demonstrate that the senior government officials are fully ready to share the funding restrictions… We believe that senior officials should keep their belts tighter,” MP Zurab Melikishvili, chairman of the parliamentary committee for budgetary and financial issues, said on October 17.

He was speaking at the session of the parliamentary committee after Finance Minister Nika Gilauri presented key parameters of the 2009 draft budget. The 2009 draft budget does not envisage any increase in pensions. President Saakashvili promised ahead of the May 21 parliamentary elections to increase monthly pensions up to USD 100 starting from 2009.

The criticism of the government-proposed 2009 draft budget comes ahead of expected cabinet reshuffle. President Saakashvili confirmed the planned reshuffle on October 16, but said there would be no “surprising” or “special” changes in the government.

Finance Minister Gilauri told lawmakers that the proposed draft was very initial one and it would undergo significant changes as the government was still expecting to define an exact amount of foreign aid that will come to help the country ease losses inflicted as a result of the August war with Russia,.

“It is very difficult to plan something at this stage because only few months have passed since Russia’s aggression,” Gilauri told reporters. He, however, acknowledged that the budget needed “improvements.”

Lawmakers from the parliamentary minority have also joined the criticism of the proposed draft budget. MP Nika Laliashvili of the Christian-Democratic Party in particular emphasized that there was a need to further increase funding for the Georgian Orthodox Church.

The draft budget already offers to increase the funding of the Georgian Orthodox Church to Gel 25 million next year, up from GEL 9.5 million in 2008.

MP Laliashvili also said that the question also was why it was planned to cut defense spending.

According to the proposed draft, Defense Ministry funding is set at GEL 950 million for the next year. As a result of the most recent budgetary amendment pass on October 10, the 2008 defense spending is now set at GEL 1.545 billion.