Underdevelopment of the land market is a major obstacle behind the development of Georgian agriculture. A significant number of unregistered plots of land prevent land consolidation and increases in agricultural productivity. According to the Ministry of Justice, as of February 2019, in the framework of the land registration reform, since 2016, there are 543,139 citizens who have registered 130,943 ha of land; 1,431 legal entities which have registered 1,793 ha; and 34,131 state entities with 169,241 ha of registered land.

On 28 November, the Georgian Central Election Commission (CEC) will hold the second round of the very last direct presidential election in Georgia before the constitutional pivot to indirect elections. This is the last stage of a political reform aiming at replacing the presidential political arrangement with the parliamentary system. The president’s powers in the new system will be extremely limited and largely symbolic.

It is that time of year again when our world starts revolving around the World Bank’s Doing Business publication. It is a time when we once more have the chance to brag about how easy it is to start a business in Georgia, about how small the tax burden on businesses is, and about how good we are at enforcing contracts.

October 30 – November 1, 2018, Pati Mamardashvili traveled to Tashkent to present at the “Social science knowledge and sustainable agricultural development along the Silk Road” conference after being invited to participate as a keynote speaker. She shared the experience of ISET as a reform model for higher education in the post-Soviet world.

On June 29, at the Tbilisi office of USAID G4G, a round table discussion about Agricultural Land Registration Reform was held. The meeting was organized by the ISET Policy Institute under the “ReforMeter” project. During the meeting, the land registration process and achievements and challenges of the land market in the country were all discussed.