Any Georgian growing up in the “dark” 1990s (a literally dark, and rather gloomy period in the recent history of our country) would remember the canned milk powder distributed, together with some other goodies, to families with children aged below 5. These black and white cans were often used as flower pots in many of these families…
Assume you want to buy tomatoes at a vegetable market in Tbilisi. At a booth, you see beautiful tomatoes of flawless quality, red, fleshy, and shiny. Right next to them are offered semi-rotten tomatoes with corky blotches, but to your surprise, both kinds of tomatoes are tagged with the very same price. “Something wrong with this seller”, you may think and buy the shiny tomatoes.
In September, sale prices for residential properties in Tbilisi declined significantly compared to the previous year (-8.6 %). In terms of area, Old Tbilisi continues to lead the price index, at 1,143 USD per m2 in September.
With Russia creating or helping sustain so many “frozen conflicts” on its periphery, it is crucially important for countries and nations finding themselves in this predicament to work a sound strategy of dealing with the situation. The military option has been taken off the table ever since the August 2008 attempt by Georgia to forcefully bring South Ossetia back into its fold. Thus, countries such as Moldova, Georgia, and now also Ukraine, don’t have too many good alternatives to choose from.
Based on July data we made the 4th update of the Q3 forecast, and it was revised down from -7.6%, down to 3.7%. We also begin to forecast the last quarter of 2014, the forecast is not promising, it is just 1.7%.