On Thursday and Friday, 28-29 of January, ISET Policy Institute hosted CARE consortium workshop under the ENPARD project (Cooperation for Rural Prosperity in Georgia). The workshop was attended by all four consortia members: CARE International in the Caucasus, ISET Policy Institute, Regional Development Association (RDA), and Georgian Farmers Association (GFA). During the meeting past achievements of the project were highlighted as well as the strategy for moving forward was agreed upon.

On November 24th, a Turkish Air Force fighter jet shot down a Russian SU-24 that briefly strayed into its airspace. One pilot was killed, and another member of the Russian military perished in the rescue attempt. Vladimir Putin called the event a “stab in the back” even though he had turned his back on Turkish warnings about incursions into its airspace. Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, facetiously stated that Turkey would not apologize for the event and that Russia should be the one apologizing.

Geostat has released its preliminary estimates of GDP growth for the third quarter. The estimated Q3 growth is 2.5%, only 0.1 percentage points below the ISET-PI forecasted value. The forecast for GDP growth in the fourth quarter now stands at 3.6%.

The average cost of cooking one standard portion of Imeretian Khachapuri increased to 3.66 GEL in November 2015. This is 1.4% higher m/m (compared to October 2015), and 9.6% higher y/y (compared to the same month of the previous year, November 2014). Given that it mostly consists of food prices that are subject to sharper seasonal fluctuations, the upward trend in Khachapuri Index is somewhat steeper than that of GeoStat’s official Consumer Price Index (CPI).

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the newly independent state underwent serious turmoil, including civil war, deteriorated governance, depreciation of critical infrastructure, and endemic corruption. But after the Rose Revolution in 2003, the country began to implement major political and economic reforms