The COVID-19 pandemic and consequent stringent lockdown measures have had a drastic toll on the Georgian economy. The economic downturn has significantly affected the resilience of local Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), whose sales decreased by almost 13% (YoY) in the first two quarters of 2020. These negative impacts of the economic contraction have been particularly severe for Women-led Small and Medium Enterprises (WSMEs).

As the Georgian Lari (GEL) briefly depreciated in September 2020, the National Bank of Georgia (NBG) once again became the subject of criticism for not being able to stabilize the exchange rate even though it had injected 120 million US$ into the economy. At a press conference (2020/09/16), the President of the NBG objected that the aim of the injection of US$ was not to strengthen the GEL since the NBG operated under a floating exchange rate policy. Rather, he went on to explain, the NBG’s constitutional duty was to ensure price stability on the basis of an inflation-targeting framework.

The COVID-19 outbreak has negatively affected the Georgian economy through a reduction in FDI, exports of goods and services, and remittances. In addition, uncertainties caused by the pandemic and containment measures hit consumption and domestic investment. As a result of this reduction in aggregate demand, combined with increased production costs due to pandemic-related constraints, GDP is expected to contract by 5% in 2020 according to NBG’s latest monetary report.

ISET Policy Institute was contracted by International Republican Institute (IRI) to provide expert consultation to Georgian political parties and assist them in developing/updating party economic platforms in the run-up to the Parliamentary Elections 2020.

Geostat has released its rapid estimate of real GDP growth for February 2020. The estimated growth stands at 2.2%, while the average real GDP growth for January-February 2019 reached 3.7%. ISET-PI predicted 4.7% and 5.4% growth for the first and second quarters of 2020 respectively, based on February 2020 data. This data does not yet fully account for the negative impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on the national economy.