The Centre of Expertise for Local Government Reform, which is part of the Council of Europe's Good Governance Division, launched a local finance benchmarking activity in Georgia in 2015. As a result, the Council of Europe toolkit was adjusted to local needs in 2016 and two phases of piloting followed in 2016-2017, further to requests of the Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure of Georgia.

A workshop on reporting/closing local finance benchmarking was held on 28 November 2017 in Tbilisi. It summed up the piloting of the local finance benchmarking in 13 municipalities, including 4 of them which piloted it at phase I. Local experts and representatives of 10 pilot municipalities (all part of phase II) provided their feedback and elaborated on the prospects of this initiative.

The local finance benmarching web application was developed, adjusted and translated into Georgian. Council of Europe experts presented the application to the participants, who highly appreciated it.

Representatives of the Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure, the Ministry of Finance and the Georgian Parliament requested the Council of Europe and the European Union delegation to Georgia to find possibilities to continue their support and to spread the local finance benchmarking practices in more municipalities, reaching a coverage of 50% of all municipalities in 2018.

The event was closing the current phase of co-operation under the programme "Strengthening institutional frameworks for local governance in the Eastern Partnership countries", which is part of thePartnership for Good Governance for 2015-2017, an initiative funded by the European Union and co-funded by the Council of Europe.