“It is an honor for me to be standing here, at ISET, in the best school of economics in the region” – with these words, Nodar Khaduri, the Minister of Finance of Georgia, started his presentation on March 10, 2014.

Assume you have lent your brother 1000 laris, and because he is a close family member, you do not charge interest from him. One day you get a phone call from your brother, and he offers you to pay back the debt either today or one year from now. What would you choose? If you act in line with standard economic theory, you would choose to get the money back today.

On the 15th of March 1962, President John F. Kennedy delivered a seminal speech to the congress, outlining the four rights that he considered essential for consumers: the right to safety, the right to be informed, the right to choose, and the right to be heard. Ever since Kennedy’s speech, the idea of consumer protection blossomed both in theory and in practice. In this year, 52 years after Kennedy’s speech, Georgia will pass a new law on the protection of consumer rights.

On the 14th of February, the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia published the draft version of the Socio-economic Development Strategy 2020 (SDS). This comprehensive document identifies the main socio-economic challenges Georgia will be facing in the next years and presents a strategy how to cope with them. The overall goal is to achieve sustainable and inclusive growth by the end of this decade.

The project provides findings and policy recommendation from a series of eight case studies documenting foreign direct investment in Georgia's agriculture and food processing industry, including grape and wine production, hazelnuts, poultry, cereals and medicinal herbs, pickled fruit and vegetables, as well as apple concentrate and aroma.