On April 3, 2015 the Government of Georgia adopted a technical regulation in the dairy sector in order to define major principles for the production, processing, and distribution of dairy products. Later in 2017, the regulation was amended and the law now strictly regulates the labelling of dairy products and particularly the use of terms such as “cheese” and “butter”.

In December 2018, Georgian power plants generated 986 mln. kWh of electricity. This represents a 9% decrease in total generation, compared to the previous year (in 2017, total generation in December was 1080 mln. kWh. The decrease in generation on a yearly basis comes from decrease in thermal power (-30%), more than offsetting the increase in hydro (+3%) and wind power generation (+11%).

Today and tomorrow over a third of the world’s population (around 2 billion people) will be celebrating Christmas1. Traditionally, the holiday season will inevitably feature an exchange of gifts. The sums spent on Christmas gift-giving are huge! For example, in 2018 the expected spending on Christmas gifts in the United States is around 885 USD per person2 – this is about 2.8% of what someone in the middle of income distribution earns per year.

The GEO real property market grew by 2.4% in Q3 2018, in comparison with Q2 2018. While the annual increase was more pronounced at 24.3% (YoY), in comparison with Q3 2017. Tbilisi dominated the real property market with a 44.4% share in total sales in Q3 2018.

According to Geostat’s figures, in the third quarter (Q3) of 2018, Georgia’s real GDP experienced growth of 4% year over year (YoY). Despite the slowdown of the growth rate compared to the previous quarters, IMF recently revised their forecast of economic growth for Georgia upwardly, from 4.5% to 5.0%. Forecasts for other international organizations and the National Bank of Georgia (NBG) remained the same, while ISET-PI, based on October’s data, expect annual growth in 2018 to be 4.6% YoY.