Georgia’s real GDP growth constituted a strong 5.5% year over year (YoY) in the second quarter (Q2) of 2018, according to the Geostat figures. Recently this year, IMF and World Bank upped their forecast of economic growth for Georgia from 4.2% to 4.5%. In August, the National Bank of Georgia (NBG) has also revised its forecast for 2018 from 4.8% to 5.5%. Meanwhile, ISET-PI expects annual growth in 2018 to be 6.3% YoY.

On June 27, 2014, Georgia and the EU signed an Association Agreement (AA) and its integral part – the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA). On July 1st, 2016, DCFTA fully entered into force. Until then, trade between Georgia and the EU was regulated by the Special Incentive Arrangement for Sustainable Development and Good Governance that contained a Generalized System of Preferences+ (GSP+) agreed to in 2005.

Georgia’s real GDP growth rate in Q3 reached 4.4% year-on-year, putting the country on the path to achieving 4.7% annual growth in 2017. Export, tourism and money transfer trends were behind the strong showing in Quarter 3. Supply side pressures will keep inflation above the 4% target in 2017.

On the 18th of October, ISET Policy Institute together with its partner organizations: Georgian Farmers’ Association (GFA), Civil Development Agency (CiDA), Export Development Association (EDA), and Association Atinati presented a new project: Food and Agriculture SME Support Initiative (FASSI).

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).