INTRODUCTION

Over the past decade, Georgia has experienced a notable increase in total exports, rising from approximately 2.86 billion USD in 2014 to over 6.55 billion USD in 2024. This represents a more than twofold increase, reflecting broader growth in the country's export sector.

Agro exports have also increased over the same period, from 825.8 million USD in 2014 to nearly 1.68 billion USD in 2024. Despite this growth, the share of agro exports in total exports has shown a declining trend. The share peaked in 2016 at 32.7%, reflecting a period when agriculture played a more significant role in the country’s export composition. Since then, the share has generally decreased, reaching its lowest point in 2022 at 22.4%, before slightly recovering to 25.6% in 2024. 

This downward trend in the share of agro exports suggests that while the agricultural sector continues to expand in absolute terms, other sectors – particularly industrial or service-related exports – have been growing at a faster pace. The data indicates a structural shift in Georgia’s export composition, where non-agricultural sectors are becoming increasingly dominant. Nonetheless, agriculture remains a substantial part of the country’s export economy, contributing over 1.6 billion USD in 2024.

The graph presented below highlights both the continued importance of agriculture in Georgia’s trade and the growing diversification of the export economy. It is important to consider strategies to maintain competitiveness in the agro sector while supporting its modernization and integration into higher value-added chains.

Building on the analysis of export trends, it becomes particularly relevant to examine the competitiveness of Georgia’s agro export products in global markets. Understanding which products the country specializes in can offer valuable insights for investment prioritization, and export promotion strategies. One well-established tool for this purpose is the Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) Index, originally introduced by Béla Balassa in 1965. Since then, RCA has become a widely used indicator in trade diagnostics, applied across academic research and institutional reports to identify sectors in which countries hold a relative export strength. For example, the World Bank’s Trade Outcomes Tool – built on UN COMTRADE data – uses RCA as a core metric to evaluate trade competitiveness and sectoral performance.

The RCA index compares the share of a given product in a country’s exports to the same product’s share in total world exports. An RCA value above 1 indicates that a country is relatively more specialized in exporting that product than the world average, suggesting a potential competitive advantage. To enhance cross-country and cross-product comparability, the RCA is often converted into its symmetric form, the Revealed Symmetric Comparative Advantage (RSCA), which ranges from -1 to +1. This transformation addresses the asymmetry of the original index and allows for clearer distinctions between strong, neutral, and weak comparative advantages.

In this note, the RSCA methodology is applied to Georgia’s agricultural and food-related exports at the HS4 product level, using trade data from the 2020–2024 period. The analysis aims to identify specific products in which Georgia demonstrates export specialization. To provide additional context, the results are complemented by 2024 trade balance data for each product category with a positive RSCA, offering a more comprehensive view of sectoral performance and potential.

For the complete paper, please refer to the attached research note (above).