27
May
2018
On May 25-27, the FREE Network Retreat was held in Minsk, Belarus. The Forum for Research on Eastern Europe and Emerging Economies (FREE) is a joint initiative of SITE (Stockholm), BEROC (Minsk), BICEPS (Riga), CEFIR (Moscow), KSE (Kyiv), and ISET (Tbilisi). All members meet annually and share their experiences.
21
May
2018
From May 14-18, Pati Mamardashvili visited the Geisenheim University in Germany to attend seminars and give lectures to students. Pati’s visit was aimed at reinforcing cooperation between ISET’s Agricultural Economics Concentration and Geisenheim University.
08
May
2018
BCI in the second quarter of 2018 has improved, reaching 39.6 index points, which is an 8.3 index point gain over the previous quarter. The improvement in Business Confidence is in line with the overall positive country performance (Geostat estimated 5.2% GDP growth in Q1 2018). The BCI increase is based on very high expectations and profitable past performance in almost all business sectors. Compared to other sectors, manufacturing assessed their past performance and expectations the most positively. In contrast, the agriculture sector is the most pessimistic, reflecting a low season in production.
07
May
2018
Since 2012, when the political party Georgian Dream took leadership of the country’s governance, economic [real] growth reached its highest rate in 2017 (5.0%). The drivers of this growth were construction (11.2%), hotels and restaurants (11.2%), and the financial sector (9.2%). However, a few sectors of the economy declined in 2017, and one was agriculture (-2.7%).
26
April
2018
2017 was a challenging year for Georgian agriculture. There is a decline in the level of sown areas, which decreased by 10.5% in 2017 compared to 2016. 214.9 thousand ha in 2017 is the lowest figure for the last four years. Average yields and production decreased for most crops, as well.
