“At least we have a lot of water – why should I pay for it?” One can frequently hear this phrase in Georgia. This popular saying is based on the relative abundance of water resources the country has: roughly 15,597 cubic meters of renewable freshwater resources per capita a year, well above the 2,961 cubic meters per capita in the European Union (World Bank 2014). However, having a resource does not mean being able to use it, nor being able to do so in a sustainable manner.

Georgia’s food & agricultural exports almost hit their 1 billion USD threshold, attaining a historic maximum since independence – and that certainly sounds like something to celebrate! However, the respective imports have also increased and broken records. As a result, the trade balance (the difference between export and import) remained virtually unchanged at (-394) million USD.

In 2018, Georgian power plants generated 12 154 mln. kWh of electricity. This represents a 5% increase in total generation, compared to the previous year (in 2017, total generation was 11 531 mln. kWh) (Figure 1). The increase in generation on a yearly basis comes from increase in hydropower (9%), more than offsetting the decrease in thermal (-5%) and wind power generation (-4%).

On Wednesday, January 23, ISET hosted the Governor of the National Bank of Georgia (NBG), Mr. Koba Gvenetadze. Mr. Gvenetadze delivered a profoundly informative lecture about the importance of monetary policies for economic well-being, discussing issues such as the importance of the price stability objective, inflation targeting frameworks (specifically why it is so crucial to avoid both deflation and high inflation), and the efficiency of monetary policy transmission mechanisms under a flexible exchange rate.

Geostat updated its preliminary estimate of real GDP growth for the third quarter of 2018. The Q3 estimate was revised downward to 3.7% (0.3 percentage points lower than the previous estimate). The real GDP growth rate reached only 2.2% year-on-year for November 2018. Consequently, the estimated real GDP for the first eleven months of 2018 was revised downward to 4.7%.