On May 31, ISET organized an excursion to an agricultural cooperative called “Gift of Forest” in Tsinamdzgvriantkari, in the Mtskheta-Mtianeti region of Georgia. The purpose of the excursion was to learn more about a successful cooperative and understand how this success could be replicated in other contexts and value chains in Georgia.

In the first part of this article, I described some of the adverse incentives resulting from a social welfare system. Then I argued that according to Simon Kuznets' famous paradigm, increasing inequality is hardly evitable when a country enters a growth trajectory (as Georgia did in 2003), and I reasoned that it is at least an ambivalent (not to say questionable) policy for Georgia, at its current state of development, to fight inequality by social welfare measures. In this vein, the article seemed to advocate that Georgia might better follow the “Asian” approach of “develop first, redistribute later”.

When thinking of “market distortions” we typically imagine government regulations, taxes, and subsidies that prevent market mechanisms from achieving an optimal outcome. For example, if you pay $100 for a 30-minute taxi ride (as is the case in many European capitals), you can easily relate it to a government regulation requiring all taxi drivers to be licensed (at a very high cost). In the absence of such a requirement, many more drivers would be able to enter the taxi driving profession, increasing supply and reducing prices.

The growth forecast for the 2nd quarter of 2014 has been revised upward from 7.5% to 7.7%. The growth forecast for the 3rd quarter of 2014 has been revised upward from 7.1% to 7.5%.

The growth forecast for the third quarter of 2014 has been targeted at 7.1%. Meanwhile, Geostat has released the GDP growth rate for the first quarter of 2014 and its preliminary estimates for April. These are 7.4% and 2.7% respectively. The April growth rate seems to be very low in relation to our forecast, but this low growth figure is most likely due to the relatively high GDP increase in April last year.