Law on apartments in Abkhazia - a "time bomb for Abkhazian-Russian relations"?
The parliament in Abkhazia has started considering a scandalous bill on apartments. The opposition is forming a headquarters for resistance, intending to prevent the adoption of this law, which it considers it an attempt by the authorities to circumvent the existing ban on the sale of residential real estate to foreigners, which in turn threatens the security of the republic.
On June 21, in the parliamentary committee on state and legal policy, deputies in a closed mode got acquainted with a package of documents on apartments received from the administration of President Aslan Bzhaniya. In the future, open meetings of the parliamentary committee will be held, to which, given the importance of the issue under consideration, journalists will also be invited, said the head of the committee, Daut Khutaba:
“This is not a quick process, we will invite specialists, members of the public and consult with them.”
If the law on apartments in Abkhazia is adopted, it is planned to build 30,000 apartments within 10 years. The authorities promise that the sale of commercial housing to foreigners will give a serious boost to the Abkhazian economy and significantly replenish the state budget. The opposition considers this an illusion and does not expect anything good from the law.
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“Legal entities pay taxes 10-15 times more than a private person. That is, the hotel will bring more to our people than the owner of the apartments. We have little land, and we need to manage this resource efficiently,” economist Akhra Aristava says.
But most of all, the opposition is not worried about the money side of the issue. It fears that the adoption of the law will lead to a sharp change in the demographic picture of the republic. Thirty-thousand apartments are 100,000 foreigners who will buy square meters and move to Abkhazia, with the current population 240,000 people. And although the law does not give the apartment owners the right to apply for Abkhazian citizenship, there are no guarantees that they will not have this right in the future.
Well-known Abkhazian blogger, member of the Public Chamber of Abkhazia Tengiz Dzhopua, calls the law on apartments “a time bomb for Abkhazian-Russian relations”.
“This law will deprive the people of Abkhazia of access to their land. Land in Abkhazia is negligible, the greed of officials is boundless, and the purse of Russian business is too heavy. The interests of Russian capital are understandable, but the short-sightedness of Abkhazian and Russian politicians is not understandable. They will buy up the land,” Jopua is sure.
The blogger predicts that although today people in Abkhazia may not understand the essence of what is happening, tomorrow, “when multi-meter fences grow in front of their children,” they will understand everything and will look for the guilty.
“Those who voted for this law, those who pushed it and defended it, will be declared to have betrayed the interests of the nation, and relations between the two peoples will begin to cool at such a speed that no agreements and financial injections will help,” Dzhopua concludes.
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