The unique cross-country study compares interest rates for a set of retail credit products in Georgia and select transition economies. Preliminary findings suggest that the cost of credit in Georgia is lower than in the CIS countries which have been covered by the survey (namely, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and in many cases Armenia) while it’s somewhat higher compared to a cohort of Central and Eastern European Countries (CEE) - this is true especially for local currency loans.

In April 2018, the Georgian Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) lost 1.5 index points, dropping from -17.5 to -19. This tiny change is a signal of stability (or stagnation) as far as domestic demand is concerned. Whether no change is a good change for Georgia is debatable. In any case, the month of April merely continues a long-term no-change trend dating back at least to September 2017.

World Cup 2018 is getting close and football can already be felt in the air. The squads are almost finalized, new jerseys are already on sale, and fan clubs are preparing venues to watch football. These are all traditional preparation for the World Cup, but interestingly for me, and possibly for you as well, football has also affected education, specifically financial education. If you are interested in how football and financial education are linked, Financial Football is the answer.

That there is a persistent demand for adult education should come as no surprise. Most people would agree that learning is a lifelong process. A distinction, however, should be made between the notion of learning understood as a process of self-discovery over one’s lifetime and learning understood in terms of the acquisition of a certain set of skills, often for the purpose of advancing one’s position in the labor market.

If you are a governmental stakeholder, civil society organization, research institute, or a concerned citizen pondering the state of the environment, the biennial Environmental Performance Index (EPI) tells an inconvenient truth regarding the trajectory of each country and its performance. The rankings provide unpolished results concerning countries and their commitments, or lack thereof, to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other complementary international agreements.