On June 2, 2022, the International School of Economics at TSU alongside the ISET Policy Institute signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Georgian Center for Strategy and Development (GCSD).

The study was to determine an optimal minimum wage for workers in Georgia, and resulted in a recommended range of 250-350GEL per month, albeit referencing numerous factors that need to be considered.

Excessive tobacco consumption is an important public health policy issue. According to estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO), 32% of the adult population in Georgia smoked tobacco in 2019 (WHO, 2021). The prevalence of smoking in men was 56.9 percent – the fourth in the world and first in Europe.

In April 2022, Georgian power plants generated 1,125 mln. kWh of electricity (Figure 1). This represents a 36% increase in total generation, compared to the previous year (in April 2021, the total generation was 825 mln. kWh).

For the second quarter of 2022, business confidence in Georgia decreased (by 2.2 index points) and reached 15.1. The highest decrease in business confidence is observed in construction (-29.7), and wholesale and retail trade (-7.6) sectors. The negative change in BCI for Q2 2022 was driven by significantly worsened past performance.