At a meeting of the Economic Policy Committee, several draft laws were reviewed in their II reading.

Deputy Economy and Sustainable Development Minister Tamar Ioseliani presented the draft Air Code and the related package of legislative amendments. She noted that all comments and recommendations submitted by the Economic Policy Committee and the Parliament’s Legal Department following the I reading had been fully incorporated into the revised text.

According to her, the amendments repeal several provisions of the Code and introduce new clauses that clarify existing regulations.

The Deputy Minister explained that the proposed amendments to the Air Code are necessitated by Georgia’s accession to the Cape Town Convention.

Tamar Ioseliani also presented the draft Maritime Code, noting that the text had been submitted to the Committee for II reading without any changes following the I reading.

At the committee meeting, the Parliamentary Secretary of the Government, Vakhtang Bachiashvili, presented in II reading the draft laws on State Procurement and on Public Procurement.

As Vakhtang Bachiashvili stated, Parliament had already adopted amendments to the procurement legislation during the previous plenary week, introducing a provision that authorizes a contracting authority to disqualify a bidder whose founder or a member of its management body has been convicted of certain criminal offenses.

Bachiashvili proposed incorporating the same provision into the current draft law, a proposal that was supported by the Committee.

The Parliamentary Secretary also presented, in II reading and without amendments, the draft law on Designs.

Committee members further reviewed two separate amendments to the draft law on Broadcasting, presented by Archil Gorduladze, Chair of the Legal Issues Committee, and Shota Berekashvili, Chair of the Economic Policy Committee.

According to the reporters, no substantive changes had been made to the drafts for the second reading, and only the legal terminology had been refined.

The Committee approved the drafts.