03
July
2017
GEO real property market slowed down in APR-17 (-16.2% MoM) and gradually recovered during next 2 months: MAY-17 (+20.8% MoM) and JUN-17 (+6.5% MoM). With a total of 24 673 property sales, GEO market in Q2 2017 grew by 12.7% (YoY).
03
July
2017
The cost of cooking one standard Imeretian khachapuri in June 2017 ranged between 2.64 GEL and 3.52 GEL, with the average price being 3.08. The average price in June 2017 is 1.8% lower compared to the previous month (May 2016), and 1.5% higher year-on-year (compared to June 2016).
01
July
2017
For the first time in history, the price of Bitcoin broke its highest record (Figure 1) rising above 2,900 USD during the last week of June, 2017. One of the reasons why the market unexpectedly became optimistic about Bitcoin could be the fact that in April, the Japanese government formally accepted1 the cryptocurrency as a mean of exchange, which gave it more validity in Asia’s richest economy.
12
June
2017
With 6.3 million tourists visiting the country in 2016, Georgia has become a popular tourist destination. In May, the number of international visitors (those who stayed in the country 24 hours or more) increased annually by 19% (compared to the same month in the previous year). While Tbilisi Airport is the main border-crossing point, in May, Batumi Airport overshot Kutaisi Airport, famous for its low costs flights, and experienced a 20% annual increase in the number of arrivals.
22
May
2017
In economics, there is a long-standing debate on whether emerging markets should adopt a fixed exchange rate currency regime or leave their exchange rates up to markets to decide. Intuitively, the exchange rate is just another price, similar to the price of a sack of potatoes, a liter of milk, or a kilogram of honey. Except that the exchange rate is the price of 1 unit of foreign currency (say, 1 US dollar) in terms of our domestic currency.
