In 1991, the former finance minister of Chile, Alejandro Foxley, said in an interview: “We may not like the government that came before us. But they did many things right. We have inherited an economy that is an asset.”
In recent years, a tendency on the part of different authorities to consolidate has been noted worldwide. Competition agencies are merging with consumer protection agencies and/or regulators in order to establish more effective and less expensive public systems. Accordingly, since the first roundtable meeting on the optimal design of a competition agency, held in February 2003, OECD has organized two more roundtables concerning changes in the institutional design of competition authorities in less than one year – one in December 2014, and one in June 2015.
As economic development progresses, air pollution and the lack of green spaces have become increasingly painful issues for Tbilisi citizens. In our previous blog, Breathing in Tbilisi, we discussed the negative outcomes – in terms of air pollution and tree-cutting – generated by the actions of self-interested developers facing an inert civil society and a local government that is unwilling and/or unable to protect the green public spaces.
Furthermore, high dollarization makes depreciation a dangerous process for the financial sector, as many people with loans or debts in US dollars are unable to pay. In addition, high and persistent dollarization constrains the effectiveness of the monetary policy, as the transmission of the monetary policy to the market interest rates and real variables are rather limited.
ISET Policy Institute together with Japan Tobacco International (JTI) Georgia offers free of charge training program "Leaders in Development". The program is designed for anybody who is involved in or is affected by, public policy decisions: government analysts and decision-makers, parliament staffers, private sector executives, civil society activists, as well as development professionals working in international organizations.