In a recent blog post, Y. Babych and L. Leruth raised several issues related to public infrastructure management in the city of Tbilisi. They observed that the consequences of poor past management practices were highly visible. But some of these consequences are also less visible or less immediate. Take schooling, for example. If the authorities fail to plan for the expected increase in the city’s population over the next few years and neglect to build an adequate number of kindergartens/pre-schools, the results will be overcrowded, fast-decaying pre-schools, and eventually poor educational outcomes. Similarly, as the number of cars keeps growing, the authorities must plan new roads and enhance their maintenance.

This report highlights the derivation of sector-specific output (revenue), employment, and investment multipliers based on the Input-Output framework for the Georgian economy, which portrays the potential spillover effects of an increase in final demand for the products of a given sector on the whole economy.

For the first quarter of 2021, BCI increased by 32.1 index points and reached 3.4 after a significant deterioration in the previous quarter. Business confidence improved across all sectors, except retail trade, with the largest increase observed in the construction sector. The positive change in BCI, for Q1 2021, is driven by optimistic future expectations and improved past performance.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to widespread economic distress in many countries around the world. For the first time since 2009, the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to have declined in 2020. Alongside other sectors of the economy, such impacts are also being felt by the food and agricultural sector. The pandemic has affected food security and nutrition, supply chains, food and livestock production, and food safety.

Confidence is retreating after a recovery that lasted about 6 months. Last month, in spite of a slight decline of the CCI, we could hold on to the belief that we had reached a plateau in the recovery from the low numbers observed last April.