Currently, farming in Georgia is a “by default activity” – the vast majority of Georgian “farmers” are not really farmers in a professional sense but rather people who try to survive by growing agricultural products. When traveling through Georgia’s countryside, one sees immediately that it is mainly the older generation which has to resort to this default activity.

On Wednesday, April 29th, ISET hosted Mr. Donghyun Park, Asian Development Bank’s Principal Economist at Economics and Research Department. Mr. Park presented recently published ADB's Asian Development Outlook (ADO) 2015 Theme Chapter “Financing Asia’s Future Growth”. ADO is the annual flagship report of the Asian Development Bank.

According to Geostat’s rapid estimates, real GDP increased by 4.9% in February. This comes as welcome news after several consecutive months of low and, at times (November 2014), negative growth. ISET’s GDP forecast predicts 0.5% GDP growth in the first quarter of 2015. However, this is likely an underestimation of the true outcome, as the economy has already partially adjusted to the external shocks that were the main drivers of the slowdown.

A year ago, in March 2014, I was invited to speak at an Israeli-Georgian innovation forum, organized by the Israeli embassy. For a number of reasons, I chose 1977 as the starting point of my presentation. One of these was personal – my family immigrated to Israel from St.Petersburg, Russia, in that year. But, more importantly, Israel of 1977 is in many ways (though not in all) comparable to Georgia of today.

The economic slowdown of the closing months of 2014 continued in January 2015, with the growth of real GDP amounting to only 0.5%. ISET‐PI’s GDP forecast is not optimistic either, with GDP growth in the first quarter of 2015 expected to be 0.5% (see GDP Forecast). The 5% economic growth initially forecasted by the government of Georgia, the 5.5% predicted by the ADB and the 4.2% predicted by the EBRD in September 2014 each seem quite out of reach now.