For resilient economic development in Georgia, the country should encourage exports of higher-value added goods. In this report, ISET-PI and GET have found that Georgia might be able to develop a comparative advantage when it comes to exporting higher-value energy-intensive products. According to projections of its electricity network operator, Georgia will develop excess capacities of low-cost electricity in the next decade.

ISET-PI and GET have predicted the potential for Georgia to specialize in the production of energy-intensive goods such as: Aluminum (unwrought, bars and rods, foil), Zinc (Unwrought) and Fertilizer mixtures.

According to Geostat’s rapid estimates, Georgia’s economy grew by 4.3% in March 2015. After the slowdown of the last several months, the growth rate in February and March looks very promising. In the first quarter of 2015, GDP growth amounted to 3.2%. In March, VAT payers’ turnover increased by 9.9% annually, and the total consumption of electricity increased by 6.2%.

The Estonian-Georgian film, Tangerines, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2014. While the film was shot in Guria, the story takes place in Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia during the war in the early 1990s.

The economic slowdown of the closing months of 2014 continued in January 2015, with the growth of real GDP amounting to only 0.5%. ISET‐PI’s GDP forecast is not optimistic either, with GDP growth in the first quarter of 2015 expected to be 0.5% (see GDP Forecast). The 5% economic growth initially forecasted by the government of Georgia, the 5.5% predicted by the ADB and the 4.2% predicted by the EBRD in September 2014 each seem quite out of reach now.