An average Georgian household spends more than 40% of its budget on food. Food prices are important determinants of access to food and stability of food security. In order to assess the stability of prices the paper looks at food price volatility for major commodities (not restricted to primary commodities only) consumed by Georgian households. Price volatility is important because both low and high prices affect different stakeholder groups (producers, consumers, exporters etc.) in different ways.

Between August 2014 and May 2015, international wheat prices declined by 18%, rice prices dropped by 14% and maize prices declined by 6% (World Bank, 2015). This decreased prices are expected to be transmitted from international to domestic consumer prices of food items (e.g., wheat flour, bread). However, there are many factors that hinder this transmission process.

Unless its glorious past during the Soviet Union, the Georgian tea sector rebounded in the late 1990s and early 2000s, yet only partially as the economic and political stability of the post-independence period left a mark on the overall productivity of the sector.

A dramatic y/y decline (44%) in Georgia’s 2015 exports to Armenia was the subject of a study by ISET-PI and the German Economic Team (GET). Our goal was to understand the extent to which this slump resulted from Armenia’s agreement to join the Eurasian Economic Union in 2014 (as part of this agreement, Armenia applied new trade barriers on imports from non-EEU countries in 2015).

Georgia’s Insolvency law of 2007 is primarily oriented towards a rapid liquidation of insolvent corporate entities and private entrepreneurs’ businesses with subsequent distribution of remaining assets amongst the creditors. The number of insolvency cases dealt with by the local courts of Tbilisi and Kutaisi is fairly limited most probably due to insufficient assets in the insolvent entities to cover the costs of the insolvency procedure.

Georgia is consistently performing very well in the World Bank’s “Doing Business” (DB) ranking 24th country globally in 2016: DB ranking is made up of several different indicators. Georgia only ranked 62nd for getting electricity (GE). GE indicator is a proxy for electricity supply quality to the business.