On the initiative of the “Georgian Dream” government, the Parliament is considering reinstating salary supplements and cash bonuses for the deputies of ministers, mayors, and state representatives — payments that have been prohibited since 2017. The bill’s authors’ main argument is that these officials are underpaid. The reality is the following:

• Compensation for the positions covered by the bill has grown over the last 4 years by 46%; for example, the salary of a Tbilisi Mayor’s deputy rose from GEL 6,765 to GEL 9,840.
• Over the same period, the pension for citizens under 70 grew at a slower pace — by only 42% (from GEL 260 to GEL 370).
• If the supplement-and-bonus ceiling is fully used, officials covered by the bill could receive an additional amount equivalent to 3.5 months’ salary per year, which in the case of a Tbilisi Mayor’s deputy means an effective rise from GEL 9,840 to GEL 12,792.
• The decision to grant a supplement or bonus is taken unilaterally by the immediate superior, without any defined criteria, formal assessment, or rules — based on their own subjective judgment.
• According to the most recent available data (2024), the average monthly salary in the public sector is GEL 1,680.

Despite the fact that compensation for the positions covered by the bill keeps rising steadily, the bill creates alternative channels for further pay increases that are non-transparent, uncontrolled, and open new corruption risks.

What the bill changes

The bill amends two articles of the law:

1. Salary supplement. The current law strictly prohibits granting supplements to any state-political or political position holder. The bill keeps the general prohibition but creates an exception for the deputies of ministers, the deputies of members of the Abkhazian and Adjarian governments, deputies of the State Representative, and deputies of mayors — in other words, the institution of the supplement is effectively reintroduced for political positions.
2. Cash bonus. An analogous change applies to bonuses. The same officials will be able to receive a bonus “for exemplary performance of duties,” “for long and conscientious service,” or “for performance of tasks of particular complexity.”

Who is affected and what sums are at stake

Under the 2026 Budget Law, the base position salary is GEL 1,600. Multiplied by the statutory coefficients, the current monthly salaries for the positions covered by the bill look as follows:

* The law sets only the upper ceiling.

Under the law, a single supplement may not exceed one month’s position salary; over the course of a year, total supplements may not exceed 20% of annual salary, and total bonuses may not exceed 10%. In other words, once the change takes effect, a minister’s or Tbilisi Mayor’s deputy could, in addition to their salary, receive at once a one-time supplement equal to an entire month’s pay; and over the course of a year, the combined supplement-and-bonus amount could reach the equivalent of 3.5 months’ salary.

For example, a deputy minister whose monthly salary is GEL 11,600 could receive an additional GEL 3,480 per month in bonuses and supplements.

On top of this, the existing legal provision that allows the Government to grant a one-off bonus in an “exceptional case” — beyond the statutory 10% ceiling — remains unchanged by the bill; expanding the circle of eligible officials simply widens the scope where this provision can be invoked.

Officials’ salaries already rise every year

If the real purpose of the change is to correct inadequate compensation for deputies, the transparent way to do so already exists — raising the coefficient in the statutory table or raising the base position salary. Recent budget laws show that this approach is actively used, and the monthly salary for each of the positions that would benefit from the bill has grown steadily and substantially. The table below shows the rise across years for two such positions:

For both positions, the salary has grown by 45.5% in 4 years. By comparison — over the same period, the pension for citizens under 70 grew by 42.3% (GEL 110), and for those over 70 by 65% (GEL 195). For the Tbilisi Mayor’s deputy this means GEL 3,075 per month more than in 2022; for the deputy first minister — GEL 3,750.

If the motivation for the change is officials’ low salaries, even then the right step would be to raise the position salary — a mechanism that is transparent, predictable in advance, and budgetable. Unlike the proposed supplement-and-bonus model, which threatens to open parallel, uncontrolled, non-transparent corruption channels.

Supplements and bonuses for political loyalty

One of the central rationales of the 2017 Law on Labor Remuneration in Public Institutions was that supplements and bonuses for political positions are a source of corruption risk, and that compensation for such officials should be paid through a fixed, transparent salary. That is precisely why the law contained one sentence: state-political position holders and political position holders “shall not receive supplements” and “shall not receive bonuses.”

The new bill’s explanatory note attempts to argue that the prohibition is logical only at the level of agency heads — ministers, mayors, or state representatives — and not for their deputies, since “the decisions taken by deputies are directly controlled by their superiors.” However, this argument rests on a false analogy for the following reason:

A minister and their deputy are appointed by the same political authority (this is what distinguishes political offices from career civil servants); their accountability is not “external” control — it is an internal political hierarchy in which the superior has no incentive to reduce their deputy’s compensation. In effect, the change gives the head of the agency the right to grant additional financial incentives to their own, politically appointed deputies — this is not the standard modern-management “performance pay” (compensation based on work performed) mechanism, but a tool for financially rewarding political loyalty.

The fundamental problem that motivated the 2017 abolition of bonuses and supplements also remains: unlike salary, they are not predetermined, are not reflected in the staffing schedule, are granted on the basis of subjective criteria (“exemplary performance,” “conscientious service”), and are difficult to monitor. That is precisely why reports by civil society organizations have consistently criticized the unjustified, systematic, and effectively salary-supplementing, non-transparent nature of bonuses and supplements.

3. The explanatory note’s international examples do not support its arguments

The explanatory note cites the experience of several Western countries to show that a “multi-component model of compensation for high-ranking public-political position holders” is widespread practice. The problem is that the cited examples conflate three entirely different mechanisms: (a) position-based salary supplements fixed by law or formula; (b) reimbursement of travel and official expenses; and (c) performance bonuses granted at a supervisor’s discretion. The bill establishes a mechanism of the third type, while the explanatory note draws on examples from the first two categories to support it.

The clearest examples are:

• USA and Canada. The explanatory note itself cites Section 66 of Canada’s Parliament of Canada Act and the U.S. — 5 U.S.C. § 5702. Both provisions concern reimbursement of official travel and expenses: in Canada — “reasonable travel and other expenses”; in the U.S. — per diem and necessary travel expenses. This is not a bonus tied to assessment of work performed, and it cannot justify granting a cash bonus to a deputy minister or mayor by a superior’s decision. Including it in the explanatory note is simply incomprehensible.
• United Kingdom. The Local Authorities (Members’ Allowances) Regulations 2003 cited by the government rule out a single official’s discretion in granting an allowance. Granting it is tied to taking on a specific area of responsibility — not to individual “good performance.” The regulations require taking into account the recommendations of an independent panel and the annual publication of information on each recipient.
• France. The explanatory note points to the deputy mayor’s functional compensation, but this example does not support the bill’s argument. France’s CGCT Article L2123-20 ties compensation to the base index of the civil service, while L2123-24 ties it to a decision of the municipal council.
• Spain. The explanatory note points to Article 75 of Spain’s Ley 7/1985. The provision distinguishes among compensation for the performance of office, attendance fees for sessions of a collegial body, and reimbursement of actual expenses incurred in performing functions. Specific amounts are set not by a mayor’s unilateral assessment but by a plenary decision of the municipal council; these decisions are reflected in the budget and must be published in the official bulletin of the province and on the municipality’s notice board. Accordingly, the Spanish example does not validate a discretionary bonus granted by a superior “for good work.”
• Ukraine is the closest example from the explanatory note’s list: Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 268 does indeed allow for bonuses and supplements within budgetary resources. However, here too there is a formal bonus regulation, and for some elected local self-government positions the decision is taken by the relevant council. Therefore, at most the Ukrainian example shows that variable compensation exists in theory — but not that, as in the Georgian bill, a supervisor’s subjective decision is sufficient, with no pre-published criteria or external control.
• The same logic emerges in the OECD/SIGMA standards that are also cited in the explanatory note. SIGMA’s 2023 Principles of Public Administration state directly that supplements and other benefits must be based on objective, statutorily defined criteria, and that performance-related pay, if used at all, must be a limited share of the salary and must rest on clear criteria. The 2024 SIGMA/OECD study also emphasizes that performance-related pay must rest on clear criteria aligned with the public interest. The bill, by contrast, sets only a numerical ceiling and leaves unanswered the central question — who, under what verifiable criteria, and under what control mechanisms, will receive the supplement or bonus.

4. The absence of anti-corruption mechanisms

The explanatory note does not address corruption risk at all — neither at the level of the explanatory note itself nor at the level of the legal text. As a result, the bill contains no preventive mechanism: it does not require the agency to define in advance and objectively in what circumstances a supplement or bonus is granted, does not require mandatory publication of decisions, and provides for no independent or external review mechanism. This in a context where corruption risk itself was one of the main grounds for the 2017 abolition.

The Western examples cited in the explanatory note work precisely because discretionary decisions there are controlled by independent institutions. In Georgia such control effectively no longer exists: the Anti-Corruption Bureau, which operated for only two years, was, instead of preventing corruption, more occupied with harassing opposition parties and civil society organizations; the Anti-Corruption Agency of the State Security Service does not serve systemic corruption prevention and is increasingly perceived as a tool of political punishment; the judiciary is not independent; and the civil society organizations that performed monitoring and oversight functions are severely restricted by repressive regulations.

Accordingly, the bill returns the new mechanism of bonuses and supplements precisely to the environment where the risk of abuse is highest and external control is weakest.

Conclusion

The bill effectively restores the situation in which the political authority had the right to grant supplements and bonuses to its own appointed deputies. The proposed change — besides selectively and substantively misreading international practice — contradicts the very principles (OECD, SIGMA) to which the examples in the explanatory note point, and creates new corruption risks where this risk had already been reduced since 2017.