On Friday, June 5th ISET hosted Loredana Sorg, Mercator Fellow of International Affairs, who gave a presentation titled "The Georgian Hazelnut Value Chain and the Potential of Cooperatives". The objective of the study was to understand how and at which level value is added, to identify critical elements for a competitive hazelnut production in Georgia, and to reflect the potential of cooperatives for the development of the value chain and in particular for organic fair-trade hazelnuts.

The main objective of this project was to analyse the predicted potential for Georgia to specialize in the production of various agricultural goods. APRC assisted the German Economic Team within this project with regards to: searching, collecting and summarizing data, reviewing existing literature to study the potential of agricultural goods which have a relative comparative advantage compare to other.

June is the time of the year when the Khachapuri Index reaches the lowest point in its annual cycle. The supply of fresh milk a key input in the production of Imeretian cheese reaches its seasonal peak a few months earlier, in March and April. The prices of cheese, while declining in a continuous fashion from January onward, bottom out with a lag of two-three months, by June or July.

If we take a more detailed look at the prices of Kh-Index ingredients (see graph), the main contributors to y/y Khachapuri index deflation in March were cheese (-12%) and eggs (-1%). All other ingredients increased in price: flour (11%), yeast (21%), butter (6%), and milk (12%). As can be easily seen, prices fell y/y for locally-produced goods (eggs and cheese, made of fresh milk); prices went up y/y for goods that are imported (yeast and butter) or use imported intermediate inputs in their production (flour and milk).

On Friday, March 20th, in the conference hall of ISET, Jan Fidrmuc from Brunel University gave a presentation titled "How Persistent Is Social Capital?”. At the beginning of the presentation, he has defined Social Capital (SK) as one of the factors of production which encourages cooperation and helps to overcome free-riding.