On December 17, Salome Gelashvili, the Deputy Head of the APRC, presented a policy paper entitled “Challenges of Executing Technical Regulation of Dairy Products” to representatives of the dairy sector. The meeting was organized in the framework of the Supporting Food and Agriculture Business Support Organizations in DCFTA and SME Policy Implementation project.

Thanks to a significant increase in the private sector expectations, BCI in the first quarter of 2018 has improved yet again (for the 2nd consecutive quarter), reaching 31.4 index points, which is a 3.2 index point gain over the previous quarter. Almost 60% of participating business executives expect their business will improve over the next three months.

The second phase assessment of the SME/Innovations Development reforms was conducted within the ReforMeter over the course of February.

Evaluating the impact of the state support programs on the firm-level outcomes in Georgia. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of the state support program of SMEs on the firm-level outcomes in Georgia. The Georgian government’s SME financing procedure offers just such a unique opportunity for a quasi-natural experiment, which allows the credible use of local/nonparametric regression discontinuity methodology (RDD).

On the 18th of October, ISET Policy Institute together with its partner organizations: Georgian Farmers’ Association (GFA), Civil Development Agency (CiDA), Export Development Association (EDA), and Association Atinati presented a new project: Food and Agriculture SME Support Initiative (FASSI).