This quarterly report provides an analysis of economic trends, as well as denoting the challenges and opportunities (in local, regional, and global contexts) in the selected value chains within six sectors to improve evidence-based decision-making by providing quality information and analytics. These specific sectors are tourism, creative industries, light manufacturing, shared intellectual services, waste management, and recycling, along with cross-cutting sectors. The analysis tracks trends from 2014 to the third quarter of 2020.

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.

This quarterly report provides an analysis of economic trends, as well as denoting the challenges and opportunities (in local, regional, and global contexts) in the selected value chains within six sectors to improve evidence-based decision-making by providing quality information and analytics. These specific sectors are tourism, creative industries, light manufacturing, shared intellectual services, waste management, and recycling, along with cross-cutting sectors. The analysis tracks trends from 2014 to the third quarter of 2020.

Covid-19 has exposed many countries to severe healthcare and economic crises, which have disproportionally adversely affected the most vulnerable and low-income parts of society. The current pandemic crisis, however, has also brought some interesting opportunities to light.

As the Georgian Lari (GEL) briefly depreciated in September 2020, the National Bank of Georgia (NBG) once again became the subject of criticism for not being able to stabilize the exchange rate even though it had injected 120 million US$ into the economy. At a press conference (2020/09/16), the President of the NBG objected that the aim of the injection of US$ was not to strengthen the GEL since the NBG operated under a floating exchange rate policy. Rather, he went on to explain, the NBG’s constitutional duty was to ensure price stability on the basis of an inflation-targeting framework.