Our latest news comes from ISET resident lecturer and researcher, Professor Muhammad Asali. Recently, Professor Asali joined a group of prominent economists from around the world and took part in the 140th annual conference of the Western Economic Association International (WEAI).

In early February, Dr. Leruth gave a presentation to the G20's Task Force on Multilateralism and Global Governance. His address, entitled "Identifying Ultimate Beneficial Owners: A risk-based approach to improve the transparency of international financial flows", is also the key aspect of a research paper that is being co-authored and produced by representatives from the universities of Liege and Tilburg; it will be published by July. To have a member of ISET's faculty address members of a G20 Task Force is an extremely proud moment for ISET.

As the Georgian Lari (GEL) briefly depreciated in September 2020, the National Bank of Georgia (NBG) once again became the subject of criticism for not being able to stabilize the exchange rate even though it had injected 120 million US$ into the economy. At a press conference (2020/09/16), the President of the NBG objected that the aim of the injection of US$ was not to strengthen the GEL since the NBG operated under a floating exchange rate policy. Rather, he went on to explain, the NBG’s constitutional duty was to ensure price stability on the basis of an inflation-targeting framework.

On November 15-16, 2019, FREE Network and ISET Policy Institute organized and conducted an international gender economics conference in Tbilisi, Georgia1. The conference brought together researchers, policy-makers, and the broader development community to discuss obstacles to gender equality and women’s economic empowerment, and policies to remove the existing constraints, focusing on Eastern Europe and Emerging Economies.

On November 28-29, Deputy Head of the APRC Salome Gelashvili attended the annual "Dushanbe Economic Meeting 2019" conference in Tajikistan. The conference was organized in the framework of the "Towards Rural Inclusive Growth and Economic Resilience" project (implemented by) GIZ and was devoted to the topic of developing the competitiveness of the agro-industrial complex in Tajikistan.