On December 3, ISET BA students visited the Georgian National Energy and Water Supply Regulatory Commission (GNERC). Revaz Geradze, Deputy Director of the Natural Gas Department, introduced the students to the mission of the GNERC and gave a presentation about the Investments Appraisal Rule, the objective of which is to develop the main principles and criteria for drafting, submitting, evaluating, approving and monitoring the investment projects for tariff setting purposes with regards to the electricity and natural gas sectors.

This year has plagued a number of countries with tremendous natural disasters and extreme weather events. Greece was challenged with extensive fires and South Africa with a shortage of water. As late as November this year, the US was still struggling to tame forest fires. Something is certainly happening with the climate. These problems arise from society only being concerned with growth.

In November 2018, Georgian power plants generated 900 mln. kWh of electricity. This represents a 7% decrease in total generati on, compared to the previous year (in 2017, total generation in November was 968 mln. kWh). The decrease in generation on a yearly basis comes from decrease in hydropower (-15%), more than offsetting the increase in thermal power generation (9%) and in WPP generation (+33%).

The European Neighbourhood Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development in Georgia (ENPARD Georgia) was implemented in March 2013. The main goal of the ENPARD program is to reduce rural poverty in Georgia.1 The total budget of the program is 102 million EUR.

The average cost of cooking one standard portion of Imeretian Khachapuri stood at 3.62 GEL in November 2018. This is 0.8% higher month-on-month (compared to October 2018), and 2.2% lower year-on-year (compared to the previous November, 2017).