Georgian consumer confidence suffered a major blow at the end of 2014, in the wake of the sharp Lari depreciation. Around February 2015, the Index found some support at the very low level of -35-30 points and has been slightly improving since then. In July 2015, this mildly positive trend was reversed, and in August, the Index dropped another 4.1 points to reach a new historical minimum of -38.4 points. Interestingly, this entire drop was driven by older respondents, those aged over 35. We will come back to this point later in the article.

In August, the average cost of cooking one standard Imeretian khachapuri jumped to 3.49 GEL, which is 11.4% higher month-on-month (m/m, that is compared to July 2015), and 7% higher year-on-year (y/y, that is compared to August 2014).

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In August 2015, the average cost of cooking one standard Imeretian Khachapuri reached 3.49GEL, which is 11.4% higher month-on-month (compared to July 2015), and 7% higher year-on-year (compared to August 2014). Two factors combined in August to push the Khachapuri index upwards. On the one hand, the Index is up due to a seasonal decline in the supply of cheese – the main (and most expensive) khachapuri ingredient.

The Georgian Lari has lost in value during the last couple of weeks, but, perhaps surprisingly, this has not yet translated into higher food prices. According to the latest results of ISET's Retail Food Price Index (FPI), the prices of food staples sold in the main Georgian supermarket chains have actually decreased by 0.6% during the last week of August (Aug 22-29).