On 28 November, the Georgian Central Election Commission (CEC) will hold the second round of the very last direct presidential election in Georgia before the constitutional pivot to indirect elections. This is the last stage of a political reform aiming at replacing the presidential political arrangement with the parliamentary system. The president’s powers in the new system will be extremely limited and largely symbolic.

The Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) with support from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs organized the annual SITE Development Day conference, which is dedicated to discussing initiatives that can help create a more equal society and improve economic development.

ISET’s Pati Mamardashvili, the head of the Agricultural Policy Research Center, has been awarded the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research in the USA. The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program, contributing to finding solutions to shared concerns. The main criteria for the selection in the program are academic merit and leadership potential.

On October 21, 2017, Georgia’s entire political map was painted in different shades of blue – the color of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party. GD won in all but one race in the country’s municipal elections – achieving solid majorities in all sakrebulo (city councils) and placing party-backed candidates as mayors in all cities and self-governing communities.

Georgian Consumer Confidence (CCI) continued to improve in August 2017, gaining almost 5 index points over the previous month (July 2017) and more than 12 points over August 2016. Ignoring the rather wild pre- and post-election swings in the index, the CCI appears to be on a steady upward trend since bottoming out in fall 2015. In August, the CCI climbed to -16.5 points, which is almost 25 index points above its value in September 2015.