31
May
2017
By the end of May, ISET’s Retail Food Price Index increased by 5.5% y/y (compared to May 2016); on a monthly basis (compared to April 2017), retail food prices slightly decreased, by 0.4%. The largest bi-weekly price changes were recorded for seasonal food products such as fresh fruit and vegetables. Prices dropped the most for tomatoes (-28%), garlic (-21%), and cucumber (-8.3%).
25
May
2017
On the 25th of May, ISET was pleased to host the environmental economist and founder of the consultancy company GIST Advisory, Pavan Sukhdev, for a presentation. Starting his career as a physicist, Mr. Sukhdev got interested in the challenges of environmental protection. This led him to investigate economics, particularly aiming at understanding the significance of businesses as a driver of the changes that we see around us as well as third-party impacts, which are known as externalities in economics.
16
May
2017
The Georgian Business Confidence Index (BCI)* has improved quite substantially, reaching 29.0 index points, which is an 11.5 index points improvement over the last quarter. The second-quarter increase in the BCI was mostly driven by strong performance in the last quarter and quite a significant improvement in expectations.
19
April
2017
American and Western European visitors to Georgia are fascinated by the fact that middle-aged Georgian taxi drivers often brandish a couple of engineering degrees, while young hotel receptionists and shop assistants frequently come with law, business, and international relations education. Having spent a couple of days in Tbilisi, visitors may come to imagine that Georgia is so abundant in human capital that entry into these fairly undemanding occupations is extremely competitive.
17
April
2017
The tradition – and, in most cases, the only way – for Georgian entrepreneurs to finance their businesses and ideas is bank lending, so-called debt financing. However, this source of financing is very limited for start-ups and early-stage businesses, due to the high level of risk involved, the unavailability of collateral assets, and high loan interest rates, which are almost unaffordable for companies that do not generate sufficient returns yet.
