On the 18th of October, ISET Policy Institute together with its partner organizations: Georgian Farmers’ Association (GFA), Civil Development Agency (CiDA), Export Development Association (EDA), and Association Atinati presented a new project: Food and Agriculture SME Support Initiative (FASSI).

The cooperative movement in Georgia started back in 2013 with EU support, through the launching of the ENPARD project, a major component of which is the development of agricultural cooperatives across Georgia.

On October 10, 2017, Professor Hans Wiesmeth challenged ISET BA students to think about possible solutions to environmental issues, more specifically, how the country can deal with beverage packaging, which is a global environmental issue, with 1 billion plastic bottles produced each day (more than ten thousand every second). Only about 10% of these bottles are currently recovered and recycled.

Just recently, a rare occurrence made the headlines in Georgia: Moody’s Investors Service upgraded the government of Georgia’s local and foreign currency issuer ratings first time in seven years, to Ba2 from Ba3, with commentary that the outlook remains stable. This news was met with great excitement, but was soon overshadowed by the unfortunate news of Georgia’s downgrade on the Global Competitiveness Indicators, without fully appreciating or understanding the significance of the Moody's upgrade.

On 26 September, the World Economic Forum published The Global Competitiveness Report 2017–2018. The full report contains detailed profiles and rankings for 137 countries based on 2016 data.