On May 13, 2016, ISET hosted the head of the IMF in Georgia, Azim Sadikov, who delivered a lecture for participants of ISET’s Finance Course for Professionals. The subject of his lecture was “Macro-economic challenges in Georgia and the strengths and weaknesses of its emerging capital markets”.

More than three years ago the ISET Economist blog discussed the idea of deposit insurance and how this idea may apply to Georgia. Today, the deposit insurance scheme is not merely an abstract idea, but a fast-approaching reality. Recently, the Ministry of Finance of Georgia discussed a draft law on implementing the deposit insurance system in the country.

This article is about a highly technical matter. To avoid losing all our readers in the very beginning, let us start with a famous doctrine by Montesquieu: Les lois inutiles affaiblissent les lois nécessaires. This principle, literally meaning “useless laws weaken the necessary laws”, should always be kept in mind by lawmakers and politicians. If a regulation is not beneficial, then it is almost surely beneficial to get rid of the regulation. Some great Georgians endorsed this principle, like Kakha Bendukidze, who is widely praised for having erased many unnecessary rules from Georgia’s legal codes.

The Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement between Georgia and the EU, brought into effect in 2014, was hailed at the time by many as being of great importance to Georgian manufacturers and food/beverage producers. Yet, skeptics commented that 1) Georgia had already had more than 7000 articles duty-free and quota-free under the pre-existing GSP+ trade terms granted by the EU for many years, and 2) very few exporters had been able to take advantage of these concessions.

Unless its glorious past during the Soviet Union, the Georgian tea sector rebounded in the late 1990s and early 2000s, yet only partially as the economic and political stability of the post-independence period left a mark on the overall productivity of the sector.