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The average cost of cooking one standard Imeretian Khachapuri in May 2015 stood at 2.88 GEL, which is 2.7% lower month-on-month (i.e. compared to April 2015). The Khachapuri Index is actually up by 1% year-on-year (compared to May 2014), suggesting a slight uptick in annual inflation, at least as far khachapuri ingredients are concerned.
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If we take a more detailed look at the prices of Kh-Index ingredients (see graph), the main contributors to y/y Khachapuri index deflation in March were cheese (-12%) and eggs (-1%). All other ingredients increased in price: flour (11%), yeast (21%), butter (6%), and milk (12%). As can be easily seen, prices fell y/y for locally-produced goods (eggs and cheese, made of fresh milk); prices went up y/y for goods that are imported (yeast and butter) or use imported intermediate inputs in their production (flour and milk).
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Economists disagree whether it was a good decision to reestablish the Georgian competition authority. When some years ago it was removed, the underlying logic was that a non-existing authority cannot be corrupt, and, more importantly, cannot harm the economy through misguided decisions. Assuming that corruption will not be a problem for the competition authority, neither now nor in the future, regulating markets is still a highly delicate issue which yields many possibilities to go wrong.
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A year ago, in March 2014, I was invited to speak at an Israeli-Georgian innovation forum, organized by the Israeli embassy. For a number of reasons, I chose 1977 as the starting point of my presentation. One of these was personal – my family immigrated to Israel from St.Petersburg, Russia, in that year. But, more importantly, Israel of 1977 is in many ways (though not in all) comparable to Georgia of today.
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On Thursday, March 26th, Dr. Nani Macharashvili, from TSU delivered a lecture in which she touched on the importance of the deliberative model of public policymaking.