Once again, Georgians across the country are preparing for the holiday season, making travel plans, crushing walnuts for gozinaki, and buying gifts for their friends and families. Gifts are an important part of celebrating the New Year and Christmas, signifying the importance of friendship and allowing us to treat our loved ones to something to start a brand new year in style.

The New Year is approaching, and Georgian housewives are already preparing for this great event. So does the ISET-Policy Institute. The special dish we have cooked for our readers is a New Year Supra Index. Served on the Georgian Supra Map, the Index shows the cost (in GEL) of a standard supra meal for a family of 5-6 persons in each one of Georgia’s regions.

Georgia has considerable deposits of metal (for instance, manganese, copper, and gold) and non-metal resources, however, our current regulations do not encourage investment while at the same time failing to generate significant fiscal revenues.

On December 14-16 ISET Policy Institute representatives participated in an inception workshop organized by the Asian Development Bank in Bangkok, Thailand. This workshop was held in the scope of the study on “Good Jobs for Inclusive Growth in Central and West Asia” (GJIG study).

We have recently updated the GDP series (the dependent variable in our model), using the revised GDP growth rates available from Geostat. Based on the new data, the forecast for GDP growth in the fourth quarter now stands at 3.5%.