According to the preliminary statistics released by GeoStat, Georgia’s real GDP growth was 4% year over year (YoY) in Q2 2017, which fell short of the 5.8% that had been expected by the ISET-PI GDP forecast made in July. This shortfall was driven not by weak performance, but overly optimistic predictions of ISET-PI’s empirical model, influenced by high actual growth in the first quarter (5.1% YoY).

Driving back home after a two-week family vacation in Turkey, a horrific surprise awaited us at the border-crossing in Vale (near Akhaltsikhe). We arrived just before midnight on Saturday, August 26, 2017. What we knew to be a very efficient procedure lasted much longer than the expected 2-3 minutes.

In August 2017, Georgian power plants generated 1,035 mln. kWh of electricity. This corresponds to an 8% increase in total generation in comparison with the previous year (in 2016, total generation in August was 957 mln. kWh). Generation decreased by 17% with respect to July 2017 (in July 2017 total generation was 1,247 mln. kWh).

Georgian Consumer Confidence (CCI) continued to improve in August 2017, gaining almost 5 index points over the previous month (July 2017) and more than 12 points over August 2016. Ignoring the rather wild pre- and post-election swings in the index, the CCI appears to be on a steady upward trend since bottoming out in fall 2015. In August, the CCI climbed to -16.5 points, which is almost 25 index points above its value in September 2015.

On 24-25 August 2017, the International School of Economics at Tbilisi State University (ISET) with the support of the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance, the Tbilisi State University, and the Italian Embassy in Tbilisi (Georgia) are organizing a Workshop on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The objective is to bring together researchers active in the field and to create an opportunity to generate discussion and interaction between local academics and policymakers and international researchers.