On May 29th, the ISET’s Salome Gelashvili spoke at the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – Tbilisi Implementation Conference hosted by the Parliament of Georgia and held at the Radisson Blu Iveria Hotel from May 28th to 29th. She participated in a panel discussion on data for sustainable development.

The average cost of cooking one standard Imeretian khachapuri in April 2018 across Georgian cities varied, from 2.90 GEL (the lowest price, observed in Kutaisi), to 3.60 GEL (the highest price, observed in Tbilisi). The price difference between Kutaisi and Tbilisi amounted 0.70 GEL, which is one of the highest differentials we have ever observed between these cities.

According to the data for the first quarter of 2018, the number of livestock has increased in Georgia. The biggest increase was observed for the number of sheep and goats, which increased by 35.9%. Such a sharp rise might be explained by the increased demand from East Asian countries.

On May 25-27, the FREE Network Retreat was held in Minsk, Belarus. The Forum for Research on Eastern Europe and Emerging Economies (FREE) is a joint initiative of SITE (Stockholm), BEROC (Minsk), BICEPS (Riga), CEFIR (Moscow), KSE (Kyiv), and ISET (Tbilisi). All members meet annually and share their experiences.

On May 22, ISET hosted a panel discussion on the importance of properly defining problems, a measure that serves as the first step of impact assessment and existing practices in Georgia. This was the first meeting of a series of RIA evening talks organized in the scope of an EU-funded project, “Legislative Impact Assessment, Drafting, and Representation”.