When Armenia entered the Russia-dominated customs union in 2013, fear spread among the Georgian public and policymakers. It looked as if Georgia would be economically squeezed in between Russia and Armenia, the latter being one of Russia’s staunchest allies in the region and, given its geopolitical dependency on Russia, sometimes seen as a little more than a Russian agent.

While in an ideal world the qualification preferences of job seekers and employers would coincide, in reality this is often not the case. Besides informational asymmetries (job seekers not knowing which qualifications are demanded by employers) the reason is that employers may be in need of qualifications that are not considered attractive by the job seekers.

The training Value Chain Analysis was delivered by Agricultural Policy Research Centre (APRC) at ISET Policy Institute. The project was funded by FAO Georgia. It took place in September-October 2014.

After the great success in preparing and delivering the Young Bankers training program for ProCredit Bank Georgia, a new training program for senior bank staff was developed and conducted in Tbilisi and Batumi in 2012. Three different groups participated in the program. These three groups consisted of employees from two departments - The Medium Loans Assessment Department and Corporate Client Service Department. In this particular program, four modules were incorporated: General Microeconomics; General Macroeconomics; Banking and Data Analysis

In September 2014 Agricultural Policy Research Centre (APRC) at ISET Policy Institute started training in “Value Chain Analysis” (VCA) for The Ministry of Agriculture of Georgia (MoA). The training was funded by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Twelve employees from different departments of MoA were trained. The aim of this training was to familiarize participants with the concept of VCA and present various qualitative and quantitative tools used in VCA.