On November 18th, ISET hosted Principle Economist of Asian Development Bank, Dr. Donghyun Park, who gave a presentation on Inequality, Inclusive Growth, and Fiscal Policy in Asia.

The aim of the project was developing a medium-term debt management strategy (MTDS) and looking into institutional arrangements, debt monitoring and forecasting practices, analytical capacity in external and domestic borrowing, preliminary fiscal transparency evaluation, and improve communication with domestic stakeholders in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance's Public Debt and External Financing Department (PDEFD) and with other relevant stakeholders.

Since the outbreaks of the Asian financial crisis in the late 1900s and the global financial turmoil in 2007, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of a financial sector based on a set of financial indicators has become increasingly important.

The Government of Georgia (GoG) is currently preparing a new Local Self Government Code that will introduce significant modifications to the structure of local-self-governments (LSGs) in Georgia. Currently, Georgia has 63 LSGs (excluding Tbilisi and those areas not under Georgian control). If the proposed law is approved in Parliament, it would increase the number of LSG units dramatically: according to the GoG, by 2015 there would be close to 120 LSGs, and by 2018, approximately 240 LSGs overall. At time of writing, the draft Code was still under discussion by the GoG, prior to its introduction to Parliament.

In Georgia, there is a clear policy trade-off between having smaller local self-government units (LSGs), which would be closer to voters and service users, and the higher overall costs of a larger number of LSGs. In November, 2012, the Georgian Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure (MRDI) began to design a major policy initiative to reform the existing system of sub-national government in Georgia.