ISET-PI has updated its forecast of Georgia’s real GDP growth rate for the fourth quarter of 2019 (the final update) and the first quarter of 2020. Here are the highlights of this month’s release:

Geostat has published its rapid estimate of real GDP growth for the fourth quarter of 2019, and their estimated growth stands at 5.3%, which is 0.7 percentage points above ISET-PI’s most recent forecast.

The real GDP growth rate reached 3.8% year-on-year for December 2019.

Utilizing the latest data, annual real GDP growth in 2019 amounted to 5.2% (the first rapid estimate). By February of 2019 (the very first forecast), our model predicted 4.4% and 5.2% real growth in the “middle-of-the-road” and “best-case” scenarios respectively. Moreover, our annual GDP forecasts of 4.9% (since November) and 5% (in January, the very last forecast), were revealed to be quite accurate.

According to the most recent (second vintage) forecast for 2020, the growth rate in the first quarter is predicted to be 4.3%.