Since the Uruguay Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which introduced agriculture to the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) negotiation table, there has been increasing policy interest and academic debate on food safety regulations and their effect on the agri-food trade. During the Uruguay Round, WTO members negotiated the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards (SPSs) in the “SPS Agreement” and the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) agreements, which share common principles and rules with all member countries (Mayeda, 2004).

The advent of globalization in recent decades has had a profound impact on the development path of countries around the globe. The rapid development of ICT technologies coupled with global tendencies to reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers since WWII made possible economic integration between countries on the scale never imagined before.

In September 2015, United Nations member states adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (the “Agenda”) and seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Agenda and the SDGs propose that countries achieve sustainable development in economic, social and environmental dimensions simultaneously.

The unique cross-country study compares interest rates for a set of retail credit products in Georgia and select transition economies. Preliminary findings suggest that the cost of credit in Georgia is lower than in the CIS countries which have been covered by the survey (namely, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and in many cases Armenia) while it’s somewhat higher compared to a cohort of Central and Eastern European Countries (CEE) - this is true especially for local currency loans.

The concept of food security (FS) is holistic and brings together the notions of the availability of sufficient amounts of food, access to food, food utilization (including nutrition aspects) and stability in the food supply.

After the break-up of the Soviet Union, Georgia went through a process of civil war and economic collapse. Official estimates suggest that Georgia’s GDP shrunk by more than 70% between 1990 and1994.