On October 9, Agricultural Policy Research Center organized an excursion to Phoka Nunnery of St. Nino, in the Javakheti region of Georgia. The Javakheti highland is a mountainous terrain at an altitude of 2000 m above sea level and home to the ominous Abul Mountain (3301 m) which can be seen from every side. Students from both ISET and researchers ISET-PI joined the excursion.

This week we use the Khachapuri Index to look at Georgia’s broader economic geography. We do so on the basis of price data for more than 100 products from each and every Georgian municipality, which were collected by the Georgian government with assistance from ISET and EU’s European Neighborhood Program for Agriculture and Rural Development (ENPARD).

During the last 12 months, the Georgian authorities have been conducting interesting experiments designed, so it seems, to test the resilience of domestic beer producers. In September 2014, the industry was hit by Article 171 of the Civil Code, prohibiting alcohol consumption in public places. The beer market, 97% of which is supplied by local producers, has immediately shrunk by 22% (in physical volume, see chart), in annual terms.

On October 7th, the head of the Agricultural Policy Research Center (APRC), Pati Mamardashvili, and researchers Lasha Lanchava and Irakli Kochlamazashvili attended a parliamentary discussion regarding the 2016 budget of the Ministry of Agriculture. This meeting was organized by the Economic Policy Research Center (EPRC) in the framework of the project "Strengthening the System of Parliamentary Democracy in Georgia".

The Six Nations Championship is an annual rugby competition featuring an exclusive club of European nations: England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, and Wales. The Six Nations Championship is considered the “elite” rugby tournament of the Northern Hemisphere, matched only by another international “elite” tournament, simply called The Rugby Championship.