In January, the average cost of cooking one standard Imeretian khachapuri fell to 3.40GEL. The Index lost 7% month-on-month (compared to December 2014) and 5.4 % year-on-year (compared to January 2014).

The only one contributor to y/y deflation was the main component of the Khachapuri recipe - cheese (-13.8%) (see graph), while the prices of other components showed have increased: flour (+16.6%), milk (+5.4%), yeast (+7.6%), butter (+11.3%), and eggs (+1.3%).

The lari depreciation has started to affect real estate market prices in Tbilisi. The average rental price for residential property has continued to fall, reaching a new historical minimum in February 2015.

With the release of the December data, the year 2014 is now “officially” over. ISET-PI has updated its forecast for Georgia’s real GDP growth rate for the first quarter of 2015; meanwhile, official rapid estimates of both fourth quarter and annual growth rates for 2014 became available from Geostat.

The average cost of cooking one standard Imeretian Khachapuri in the first month of 2015 dropped to 3.40 GEL, which is 7.4% lower month-on-month (m/m, that is compared to the previous month), and 5% year-on-year (y/y, that is compared to the same month of last year).