Georgian agriculture was more developed in Soviet times than it is today. Despite great overall technological progress almost everywhere in the last 20 years, Georgia moved back when it comes to agriculture. In the year 1990, at the end of the Soviet Union, the number of cattle exceeded 4 million, while today it is just a little more than 1 million.

Travel and Tourism is one of the largest and fastest-growing service industries globally. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), the industry’s direct contribution to World GDP in 2012 was US$ 2.1 trillion (2012 prices) and it supported 101 million jobs.

On October 23, 2013 ISET hosted a strategic dialogue on Georgia’s national competitiveness. Eric Livny, ISET’s Director, opened the dialog with a brief presentation of the major changes in Georgia’s competitiveness performance in the 2012/13 Global Competitiveness Report. Georgia improved from 77th to 72nd position; the country saw the largest improvement in the macroeconomic environment while doing slightly worse in the labor market, healthcare, and primary education pillars.

Most of us take as a given the necessity of strong property rights protection. It is hard to imagine economies that could flourish and develop if the security of persons and property conditions are not met.

Last year, Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili announced his plans to set up a so-called co-investment fund. It took a year for this idea to mature, but finally, a group of financially potent investors endowed the fund with 6 billion dollars.