Economic reforms announced in the run-up to the parliamentary elections in October 2016 raised concerns about whether Georgia was departing from its path of prudent fiscal policy. A reform of the corporate profit tax and increased infrastructure investment were driving expectations of a 6% of GDP budget deficit in 2017, endangering Georgia’s macroeconomic stability and its reputation with investors.

The Georgian Business Confidence Index (BCI) continues to decline, albeit at a slower pace. The first-quarter decrease in the Index was mostly driven by a significant decline in past performance.

Have you ever heard about a mysterious law that predicts the size of a city? If you tell me the population of the largest city in a country, I can tell you the size of the second and third-biggest cities. In 1949, George Zipf came up with the simple theory called the rank-size rule, or “Zipf 's law.” Applied to the size of cities, this law says that the second city and following smaller cities should represent a proportion of the largest city.

The average cost of cooking one standard Imeretian khachapuri in February 2017 is 3.66 GEL, which is 0.2% lower month-on-month (compared to the previous month), and 6.2% higher year-on-year (that is, compared to the same month of last year). The highest price for khachapuri is found in Kutaisi, where the price stands at 3.95 GEL. Telavi took second place with 3.59 GEL.

Beginning in July 2017, if an entrepreneur offers and/or advertises property and/or service for sale in the territory of Georgia, the price of the property/service shall be expressed solely in GEL. According to the bill, failure to abide by the new law when denominating the price will lead to a warning, while a repeated offense will lead to a penalty of 1000 GEL. Each subsequent offense will be subject to a penalty of 5000 GEL.