Georgia’s real GDP growth rate in Q3 reached 4.4% year-on-year, putting the country on the path to achieving 4.7% annual growth in 2017. Export, tourism and money transfer trends were behind the strong showing in Quarter 3. Supply side pressures will keep inflation above the 4% target in 2017.

The cost of cooking one standard Imeretian khachapuri in October 2017 varied from 3.04 GEL to 4.18 GEL. The average price was 3.64 GEL, which is just slightly (0.1 %) lower than the previous month (September 2017). In annual terms (compared to October 2016), the Khachapuri Index showed quite a significant increase of 7.2%.

In the first half of November, ISET’s Retail Food Price Index increased by 9.2% y/y (compared to November 2016). On a monthly basis (compared to October 2017), retail food prices slightly increased, by 1.2%. The largest bi-weekly price changes were recorded for fruits and vegetables.

For several consecutive years, we have been observing a seasonal spike in Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) coinciding in time with young wine festivals (rtveli) and post-harvest euphoria in rural Georgia. Not this year. In September 2017, CCI lost 2.6 points, going down from -16.4 to -19. Both CCI components, the present situation, and expectations indices declined, by 3.4 and 1.9 points, respectively.

Recently, Geostat has released the preliminary estimate of the real GDP growth for the third quarter of 2017. The Q3 growth rate now stands at 4.4%, which is 1.5% below ISET-PI’s last forecasted value. As a result, the estimated real GDP growth for the first nine months of 2017 amounted to 4.7%.