Georgia, Tbilisi, April 25 / Trend, N. Kirtzkhalia /
The date of the permit receipt for the construction of the Khudoni Hydropower Plant was delayed to March 1, 2014, Minister Kakha Kaladze said after a government meeting on Thursday, commenting on the amendments made to the agreement between the Georgian government and 'Transelektra' Construction Company.
"The first thing we did was implement a three-month moratorium which was prolonged until March 1, 2014," he said.
Responding to the question as to whether this is due to the recommendations of NGOs and experts who had been given negative opinion because of environmental impacts of the construction plant, the minister answered that it is not.
"This is the moratorium, which was announced by us and the Ministry of Environmental Protection to study the agreement, which was formalized in 2011 to determine its positive and negative sides. The group working on the issue made its comments. We submitted all of these comments to the company, and they will be considered in the new agreement. The company must prepare an assessment on the environmental impact, which will be submitted to the Ministry of Environmental Protection, and then the Ministry will give either a positive or a negative response," Kaladze said.