2013 was a challenging period for Georgia. Elections, political and policy instability contributed to the significant slowdown in economic growth. Apart from the internal factors, external factors also contributed to the slowdown. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) data, world economic growth has decreased from 3.2% to 2.9% and IMF forecasts that the world will catch higher growth rates in the following years.
Looking into what happened to the neighboring economies in 2013 (the reference group is typically the CIS countries, although Georgia is not officially a member of the Commonwealth, but shares many social and economic characteristics with the countries in this group) we find that growth of the CIS region decreased from 3.4% to 2.5% (see Chart 1), and, according to the IMF experts, low external demand and low investment were among the main reasons behind the slowdown.