It is always a cause for celebration whenever a member of the ISET community – be they student or faculty – achieves new success, but this month has borne witness to some unprecedented good news. Professor Daniel Levy, who has visited ISET as a visiting professor every year since 2011 and is one of the institute's most loyal friends, has been elected as the 26th President of the Israeli Economics Association.

Recently, Geostat has released the preliminary estimate of real GDP growth for the second quarter of 2020, which now stands at -12.6%. The real GDP growth rate contracted by 7.7% and 5.5% year-on-year in June and July 2020, respectively. Consequently, the estimated real GDP for the first seven months of 2020 amounted to -5.8%.

Governments around the world are racing against the clock to help communities damaged by the economic fallout of COVID-19. Eager to bring good news to their constituents, they are brokering deals likely to bring employment and much-needed international investments. Georgia, of course, is no exception. Recent FDI projects include a plastics processing plant with a stated capacity to employ 400 local workers in plastic waste recycling jobs and the associated sections of the supply chain.

On the 5th of August, a list of planned legislative amendments for regulating the functioning of the labor market passed their second reading in parliament. These amendments, which are also likely to pass their third and final reading in the coming weeks, are expected to improve workers’ protection.

This report was prepared under the mandate ‘Analysis of the National Agricultural Knowledge and Information System (AKIS) in Georgia’ commissioned for the UNDP project ‘Modernization of Vocational Education and Training (VET) System Related to Agriculture in Georgia’. The mandate includes three larger fields of inquiry, namely an analysis of the Georgian AKIS actors and linkages including a visualization, the identification of assets and gaps in the current system, and recommendations on how to improve.