10
April
2015
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.
17
March
2015
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.
13
March
2015
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.
23
February
2015
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”.
08
February
2015
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.
