On August 16-22, 2015 the head of ISET-PI's Agricultural Policy Research Center (APRC), Pati Mamardashvili participated in a study tour in Switzerland, organized by the Market Opportunities for Livelihood Improvement in Kakheti (MOLI) project. Local government and private sector representatives from Kakheti were invited on the tour.

Exchange rate fluctuations are one of the most popular topics for debate in today’s Georgia. Given that Georgia’s self-sufficiency ratio in food products is quite limited (34%), Lari depreciation might be particularly hurtful for Georgian consumers, who spend considerable amount of their income on food.

Given the newly revised Q3 forecast, the annual growth in 2015 is expected to be 2.6% in the worst-case, or “no growth” scenario, and 3% in the best-case, or “average long-term growth” scenario (see our January 2014 and February 2014 publications for a note on methodology).

After relatively high GDP growth in February and March, the Georgian economy slowed down considerably in April. According to Geostat’s rapid estimates, GDP grew by only 0.9% annually in the reporting month. Consequently, in the first four months of 2015 the Georgian economy expanded by 2.6%. ISET’s GDP forecast for the second quarter of 2015 is 5.1%, which seems to be rather overoptimistic given the grim start of the quarter.

The growth forecast for the second quarter of 2015 was revised slightly downward from 5.1% to 5.0%. The growth forecast for the third quarter of 2015 has been targeted at 5.3%. Meanwhile, Geostat updated its GDP growth estimate for April 2015 to 0.9%.