On February 12, the Private Sector Development Research Center (PSDRC) at ISET-PI organized a certificate award ceremony for Competition Agency staff who attended an advanced STATA training course provided by the center.

The agricultural cooperative movement started a few years ago in Georgia and the registered farmer groups are currently still at the embryonic stage of development. The Soviet legacy and rather negative attitude towards earlier forms of cooperation (Kolkoz and Sovkhoz) has gradually faded among farmers, and today more than 1,400 cooperatives are registered with the Agricultural Cooperative Development Agency under the Ministry of Agriculture of Georgia.

Geostat updated its preliminary estimate of real GDP growth for the first and second quarters of 2017. The Q1 and Q2 GDP growth estimates were revised upward by 5.3% and 4.9%, respectively (0.2% higher than initial estimates). The third quarter estimates remained unchanged so far.

ISET’s Pati Mamardashvili, the head of the Agricultural Policy Research Center, has been awarded the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research in the USA. The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program, contributing to finding solutions to shared concerns. The main criteria for the selection in the program are academic merit and leadership potential.

In the middle of December, food prices maintained an upward trend, as ISET’s Retail Food Price Index increased by 2.2%, compared to mid-November 2017. It turns out that the holidays will cost more in 2017, compared to December 2016, as we recorded a significant 10.9% y/y increase in food prices.