31
January
2020
High and rising levels of foreign currency indebtedness have been an important topic in Georgia over the past several years. To address this issue and protect borrowers from currency risks, the National Bank of Georgia (NBG), as well as the Georgian Government have implemented regulations to hinder excess indebtedness. Let’s have a look at the timeline (Figure 1) of recent lending regulations and the accompanying monetary policy measures and observe their impact on changing lending patterns in the Georgian economy.
31
January
2020
In 2019, Georgian power plants generated 11,865 mln. kWh of electricity. This represents a 2% decrease in total generation, compared to the previous year (in 2018, total generation was 12,149 mln. kWh) (Figure 1). The decrease in generation on a yearly basis comes from decrease in hydropower (-10%), more than offsetting the increase in thermal (+34%) and wind power generation (+0.5%).
31
January
2020
Geostat has published its rapid estimate of real GDP growth for the fourth quarter of 2019, and their estimated growth stands at 5.3%, which is 0.7 percentage points above ISET-PI’s most recent forecast. The real GDP growth rate reached 3.8% year-on-year for December 2019.
31
January
2020
The emergence of GVC, global value chains, around more than two decades ago transformed the way economists think about countries’ comparative advantage and specialization in production. It has also transformed the understanding of what it takes for a country to be successfully integrated into world trade networks and derive maximum benefit from global trade.
30
January
2020
ISET’s faculty continues to prove itself on the world stage with no fewer than two papers soon to be published in international journals. Both papers were authored by Professor Muhammad Asali, a veteran member of ISET’s faculty and graduate of Colombia University; Muhammad later taught at Colombia, as well as New York University and Union College.
