The Georgian Business Confidence Index (BCI) continues to improve. Unlike last quarter, the second-quarter increase in the index was mostly driven by a significant improvement in performance rather than in business expectations, which kept rising albeit at a marginal pace.

On June 15, 2016, ISET held a press conference to discuss recent economic indicators of Georgia. In the second quarter of 2016, the two most important economic barometers of consumer and business sentiment in Georgia – the Business Confidence Index (BCI) and the Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) continued to steadily improve.

According to GeoStat estimates, real GDP grew by 2.6% year over year in February 2016. This growth rate is an improvement over the 0.8% growth observed in the previous months. Still, in order to reach the predicted quarterly 2.9% growth (the ISET-PI forecast for Q1 real growth), the economy would have to have expanded by at least 5.4% in March. While the actual growth for March is likely to be lower than that figure, the increases in the consumer and business confidence indices (CCI, BCI) in the last month can be interpreted as good signs for the economy going forward.

The Georgian Business Confidence Index (BCI) has gained 3 points (on a [-100/100 scale])1 due to the strengthening of business expectations. All of a sudden, the expectations of the private sector in Georgia improved and reached 38 index points. This is an improvement from 16 points in the fourth quarter of 2015.

After the early signs of rebounding seen in Q3 2015, the Georgian Business Confidence Index (BCI) has lost 3 points (on [-100/100 scale])1 on the weakening of business expectations.