On 26 September, the World Economic Forum published The Global Competitiveness Report 2017–2018. The full report contains detailed profiles and rankings for 137 countries based on 2016 data.

In the summer of 2017, Georgia experienced an unusually high number of forest fires across the entire country. 35 forest fires were recorded just in August (official data reporting the size of area burned by these fires is not yet available). In almost all regions of the country, several fires were reported. Among them, the conflagration in the Borjomi gorge had the most dramatic consequences: it lasted for seven days (20-27 August), and more than 100 hectares of forest were destroyed. Many people claim that these cannot be all accidental events.

On May 19, 2017, at the Radisson Blu Iveria hotel, the Agriculture Policy Research Center (APRC) of the ISET Policy Institute (ISET-PI) presented two reports regarding “The Georgian Tea Value Chain Study” and “The Georgian Trout Value Chain Study” value chain analyses.

The above quote seems to fit the state of affairs in the European Union fairly well, as the EU’s crisis is continuing, getting deeper, and engulfing more actors than when it started. To name a few well-known events and stats: Greece probably had the first meaningful kick-off in the chain of developments when it faced threats to stability in its own financial system at the end of 2009. At that time, an unreported estimated deficit jumped from 7% of GDP to the first 13%, and then stabilized at 15% as the "new normal."

On November 10, ISET hosted an EBRD group with a keynote speaker, Alexander Plekhanov, Deputy Director of Research at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London. He presented the EBRD’s Transition Report, entitled “Transition for All: Equal Opportunities in an Unequal World”.