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January 2016 Macro Review | Saved by statistics – growth rate jump in November revives hopes, but caution is in order
25 January 2016

According to the most recent rapid estimates of economic growth by GeoStat, in November 2015 the Georgian economy increased by 5.3% compared to the same month the year before. The 5.3% increase represents the highest growth rate in nearly 15 months. This optimistic outcome should, however, be treated with a degree of caution. As can be seen from Figure 1 above, one of the reasons for the high growth numbers in November 2015 was the fact that November 2014 was a particularly bad month in which GDP declined by 0.5% in year-on-year terms.

Nevertheless, the high growth in November 2015 can be treated as evidence that the overall economy stabilized in the last quarter of the year. We are certainly not observing high swings in GDP, which in itself is a good sign.
For the first eleven months of 2015, the year-on-year growth rate was 3.0% – the same as ISET-PI’s Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) annual growth forecast. The LEI prediction for the fourth quarter is still 3.5% (the forecast has remained virtually unchanged since the last update).

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