The average cost of cooking one standard Imeretian Khachapuri in June 2018 stood at 3.15 GEL, which is 0.7% lower month-on-month (compared to the previous month), and 2% higher year-on-year (compared to the same month of last year).
Geostat has released its GDP growth estimate for the first quarter of 2018. The Q1 growth stands at 5.2%, which is 1.1 percentage points above the recent forecast. ISET-PI’s forecast of real GDP growth for the second quarter of 2018 remains unchanged at 5.9%. The first estimate for the third-quarter growth forecast is at 7.2%.
In May 2018, the average price of cooking one Imeretian khachapuri stood at 3.17 GEL. Compared to the previous month (April 2018) the Khachapuri Index lost 3.6%. In annual terms (compared to May 2017), however, the Index added 0.9%.
Georgian and Armenian ruling parties have been until recently basking in the glory of high GDP growth rates. Armenia’s stellar growth performance of 7.5% in 2017 and Georgia’s respectable 5% are, indeed, worthy of praise. However, do these figures really matter for the objective well-being of the majority of Georgians and Armenians? Second, how does economic growth, as measured by GDP, affect people’s subjective perception of happiness?
Do you happen to have some 1.7 trillion USD to spare? Somewhere between 2 and 10% of the Georgian population suffers from a lack of basic access to drinking water (Global High-level Panel on Water and Peace, 2017; The Global Water Partnership and OECD, 2015). Globally, 1 in 4 people will be affected by shortages of freshwater by the year 2050 (United Nations, 2018).