According to NBG, the volume of total remittances to Georgia amounted to 1,379 million USD in 2017, a 19.8% YoY increase. The recovery of remittances is a clear sign that the economies of Georgia’s partner countries continue to improve. All top source countries of money inflows to Georgia showed a notable increase: Russia (+15.4% YoY), Italy (+17.9% YoY), the United States (+11.2% YoY), and Greece (+13.4% YoY).

GEO real property market grew by 10.6% in 2017 in comparison with 2016. Annual increase was observed in all quarters, with the highest jump in Q2, 14.2% (QoQ) and 20.0% (YoY).

On 27 March 2018, the ISET Policy Institute in partnership with the World Bank and UNICEF hosted a high-level policy discussion, “Higher Education Reform in Georgia: Challenges and Opportunities”, which was the fourth in a series of education policy dialogues focused on higher education.

Geostat has revised its rapid estimate of real GDP growth for the fourth quarter of 2017. Estimated growth now stands at 5.4%, which is 0.7 percentage points above the previously estimated average growth rate for Q4. As a result, the real GDP growth for 2017 reached 5.0%.

Back in 1991, I attended a big “Does Socialism Have a Future?” conference hosted by my alma mater, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The session I remember most vividly featured a Hungarian dissident, a poet, ridiculing ineffective communist propaganda. “Communists”, he told a sympathetic audience, “tried to convince us that jeans can cause impotence in young males and that Coca Cola is bad for people’s health”.