February is usually a good time to take stock of the country’s economic performance because at the beginning of the month statistical agencies release data on many baseline indicators for the previous year. Preliminary data reveals that the annual GDP growth rate in 2014 was 4.7%, which fell short of the 5% that had been expected.

On February 18, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s (EBRD) lead economist for Central Asia and Georgia, Agris Preimanis, delivered two presentations at ISET titled: 1) “Oil-driven Russia downturn adds to weakness in EBRD economies” and 2) “Innovation in Transition”.

With the release of the December data, the year 2014 is now “officially” over. ISET-PI has updated its forecast for Georgia’s real GDP growth rate for the first quarter of 2015; meanwhile, official rapid estimates of both fourth quarter and annual growth rates for 2014 became available from Geostat.

The aim of the project was developing a medium-term debt management strategy (MTDS) and looking into institutional arrangements, debt monitoring and forecasting practices, analytical capacity in external and domestic borrowing, preliminary fiscal transparency evaluation, and improve communication with domestic stakeholders in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance's Public Debt and External Financing Department (PDEFD) and with other relevant stakeholders.

According to Geostat’s rapid growth estimates, Georgia’s real GDP declined by 0.5% in November 2014 (Chart 1). Despite this, growth in the first eleven months of 2014 was a robust 5%, which is certainly a much better result than most countries in the region could boast. The ISET fourth-quarter GDP forecast predicts 3.9% growth in the last three months of 2014.