Borjomi was the final stop and the highlight on a four-day anticorruption program ISET organized for students and faculty of its partner university, the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) in Bergen. The tour was hosted by Borjomi LTD, producer of Georgia’s most famous mineral water – the “Coca Cola of the Soviet Union”, in the words of Jacques Fleury, the company’s former CEO.

As a freshwater resource-rich Caucasian country, Georgia is well-positioned to produce high quality trout in its mountains. However, the Georgian trout sector is struggling and faces a number of constraints to further development.

Currently, the Georgian agricultural sector is characterized by relatively low productivity (by international standards) and its contribution to the GDP of the country is much lower than what it could be, considering that 45%1 of the Georgian labor force is currently employed in agriculture.

On November 12th, President of ISET and ISET-PI, Eric Livny moderated a panel discussion on “Competing Water Needs” organized by the USAID policy-advocacy project Governing for Growth in Georgia (G4G). Representatives of all water-using sectors were invited to participate. The discussion included the viewpoints of stakeholders in the agriculture, environment, and energy sectors.

On October 6th, ISET-PI research fellow, Levan Pavlenishvili of the Energy and Environment Policy Research Center, participated in a panel discussion organized by World Experience Georgia (WEG) at Ligamus Book shop of Ilia State University. The panel discussed Discussion subsidies in the energy sector and it was attended by representatives of academia and other sector stakeholders including WEG representatives Mr. Murman Margvelashvili and Mr. Giorgi Mukhigulishvili.