Until very recently Russia was considered by many foreign companies a somewhat difficult but promising country for investment, a “land of opportunity” that perhaps necessarily came with a hefty dose of a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside of an enigma”. The difficulty was stemming primarily from Russia’s heavy-handed bureaucracy. Stories of corrupt practices, politically motivated court decisions, and questionable tax authorities’ tactics abounded.

The frenzied seasonal agricultural activities – purchases of plants, seeds, fertilizers, investment in food processing, as well as the upcoming elections, invigorated real economic activity in March 2014. According to the GeoStat primary estimates, in this month the y-o-y real economic growth reached 8.3%. As a result, the primary growth rate for the first quarter of 2014 increased to 7.4 %.

The project provides findings and policy recommendation from a series of eight case studies documenting foreign direct investment in Georgia's agriculture and food processing industry, including grape and wine production, hazelnuts, poultry, cereals and medicinal herbs, pickled fruit and vegetables, as well as apple concentrate and aroma.

Last week I discussed the economic consequences of inequality. Contrary to a traditional tenet of economics, empirical research has shown that inequality may have adverse economic consequences. Inequality increases the risk of political instability in a country, posing a threat to investments due to the fact that political unrest is highly detrimental to the profits made from any economic activity.

For many observers, the Georgian job market is a mystery. Companies are bitterly complaining about a lack of engineers, forcing them to withhold the expansion of production capacities and to cut down investments. Yet Georgian young people, who could make good fortunes by studying technical subjects, prefer to learn the law, business administration and the like, qualifications that are oversupplied in the market and on average do not yield high salaries.