Furthermore, high dollarization makes depreciation a dangerous process for the financial sector, as many people with loans or debts in US dollars are unable to pay. In addition, high and persistent dollarization constrains the effectiveness of the monetary policy, as the transmission of the monetary policy to the market interest rates and real variables are rather limited.

Based on the latest data, we expect annual growth in 2016 to be 3.3%. This is just 0.1% below the recently released annual economic growth projections of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and 0.2% lower than the annual forecast of the National Bank of Georgia.

This week, another crazy idea haunted economically faltering Europe. According to the plans of European politicians, the 500 euro note will disappear and cash payments above 5,000 euro will be made illegal. Officially a measure against money laundering, the pretext was correctly debunked by Hans-Werner Sinn in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: the true reason for this step is to push interest rates further down.

It is easy to understand what it means for an economy to be weak or strong. We know that a strong economy is characterized by low unemployment and high growth rates. Other desirable traits are, for example, low levels of poverty and income inequality, when all citizens enjoy reasonable standards of living.