On October 22, ISET Policy Institute's Agricultural and Rural Policy Research Center (APRC) conducted a stakeholder workshop entitled “Information quality standards for the participants and beneficiaries of the Agricultural Knowledge and Information System (AKIS)”.

On 28 May, Georgia announced its fourth anti-crisis plan, in which the government will subsidize 4 percent of the interest rate of mortgage loans for five years. The subsidy will be issued for loans not exceeding 200,000 GEL and will only apply to those taking mortgages for the purchase of residential apartments that are newly built or under construction, from 1 June 2020 to 1 January 2021. The state will also ensure the completion of ongoing construction.

May 11 saw the second discussion in ISET's ongoing series of international policy online panels which examine the possible socio-economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The second panel was dedicated to what the higher education sector will look like when the pandemic is declared to be over.

Although the operations of many businesses and organizations have been brought to a crashing halt due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, ISET has refused to allow the crisis to hinder its work. Over the last few months, all teaching and academic activity have been shifted online using Zoom, a format that works equally well for operations of ISET Policy Institute and its efforts to serve as a knowledge accumulation and exchange platform in the lock-down.

We live in a world where the production of a single good typically involves manufacturing inputs from many different countries around the globe. For example, a typical iPhone production takes place in as many as 7 countries, including the USA, Mongolia, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, and even Switzerland. This is what is known to economists as global value chains (GVC). The emergence of GVC more than two decades ago transformed the way economists think about countries’ comparative advantage and specialization in production.