14
June
2016
On June 15, 2016, ISET held a press conference to discuss recent economic indicators of Georgia. In the second quarter of 2016, the two most important economic barometers of consumer and business sentiment in Georgia – the Business Confidence Index (BCI) and the Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) continued to steadily improve.
30
May
2016
The growth forecast for the 2nd quarter of 2016 was revised downward from 5.0% to 4.2%. Our first prediction of GDP growth for the third quarter is 4.3%. Meanwhile, Geostat has updated its GDP growth estimate for the first quarter of 2016. The Q1 growth rate stands at 2.3%, which is 0.6 percentage points below the forecast.
20
May
2016
According to Geostat’s rapid estimates, real GDP grew by 3.4% in March, while the growth rate for Q1 stood at 2.3% year over year. The estimated first quarter growth was 0.5 percentage points less than ISET-PI’s GDP forecast for the quarter. We have updated our forecast for Q2 based on the new information and lowered it from 5% to 4.2%; at the same time, the Q3 forecast was revised upward to 4.3%.
20
April
2016
According to GeoStat estimates, real GDP grew by 2.6% year over year in February 2016. This growth rate is an improvement over the 0.8% growth observed in the previous months. Still, in order to reach the predicted quarterly 2.9% growth (the ISET-PI forecast for Q1 real growth), the economy would have to have expanded by at least 5.4% in March. While the actual growth for March is likely to be lower than that figure, the increases in the consumer and business confidence indices (CCI, BCI) in the last month can be interpreted as good signs for the economy going forward.
20
April
2016
We started forecasting the annual growth rate at the beginning of 2014 (see our January 2014 and February 2014 publications for a note on methodology). Based on this month’s data, we expect annual growth in 2016 to be 2.0% in the worst-case or “no growth” scenario, and 4.5% in the best-case or “average long-term growth” scenario.
