08
September
2014
After a dip in April, the GDP growth rate seems to be back on track, the year-on-year growth rate in July was 7.2%. Higher rates of electricity consumption and an increase in the change of VAT payers’ turnover corroborate this evidence. In July electricity consumption and VAT payers’ turnover were 3.8 and 15.4 percent higher compared to the same month in the previous year.
17
July
2014
The purpose of this event was to have a discussion about the potential of the tourism sector to improve well-being and reduce poverty in rural areas of Georgia, as well to discuss the contribution the development of large hotels in peripheral touristic destinations can make to inclusive growth in local communities. The follow up activity of this dialogue was an excursion to the Kazbegi Municipality on July 19.
16
June
2014
In the first part of this article, I described some of the adverse incentives resulting from a social welfare system. Then I argued that according to Simon Kuznets' famous paradigm, increasing inequality is hardly evitable when a country enters a growth trajectory (as Georgia did in 2003), and I reasoned that it is at least an ambivalent (not to say questionable) policy for Georgia, at its current state of development, to fight inequality by social welfare measures. In this vein, the article seemed to advocate that Georgia might better follow the “Asian” approach of “develop first, redistribute later”.
11
June
2014
The growth forecast for the 2nd quarter of 2014 has been revised upward from 7.5% to 7.7%. The growth forecast for the 3rd quarter of 2014 has been revised upward from 7.1% to 7.5%.
11
June
2014
The growth forecast for the third quarter of 2014 has been targeted at 7.1%. Meanwhile, Geostat has released the GDP growth rate for the first quarter of 2014 and its preliminary estimates for April. These are 7.4% and 2.7% respectively. The April growth rate seems to be very low in relation to our forecast, but this low growth figure is most likely due to the relatively high GDP increase in April last year.
