ISET’s director recently participated in the EU Stronger Together Conference, centered on the EaP Neighbourhood: Promoting the Clean Energy Transition in Eastern Partnership Countries. The conference, highlighting the key achievements and goals under clean energy initiatives, was hosted by the European Commission, the EU Delegation to Eastern Partnership Countries, Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER), Energy Community Secretariat (EnC), and International Energy Agency (IEA).

We’re thrilled to announce that ISET’s Policy Institute has reached its tenth anniversary and alongside our celebrations, our lead economists and researchers have presented a newly developed Gender Equality Index at an international conference.

Our latest news comes from ISET resident lecturer and researcher, Professor Muhammad Asali. Recently, Professor Asali joined a group of prominent economists from around the world and took part in the 140th annual conference of the Western Economic Association International (WEAI).

In early February, Dr. Leruth gave a presentation to the G20's Task Force on Multilateralism and Global Governance. His address, entitled "Identifying Ultimate Beneficial Owners: A risk-based approach to improve the transparency of international financial flows", is also the key aspect of a research paper that is being co-authored and produced by representatives from the universities of Liege and Tilburg; it will be published by July. To have a member of ISET's faculty address members of a G20 Task Force is an extremely proud moment for ISET.

As the Georgian Lari (GEL) briefly depreciated in September 2020, the National Bank of Georgia (NBG) once again became the subject of criticism for not being able to stabilize the exchange rate even though it had injected 120 million US$ into the economy. At a press conference (2020/09/16), the President of the NBG objected that the aim of the injection of US$ was not to strengthen the GEL since the NBG operated under a floating exchange rate policy. Rather, he went on to explain, the NBG’s constitutional duty was to ensure price stability on the basis of an inflation-targeting framework.