The ISET Policy Institute is a founding member of the Economic Policy Advocacy Coalition (EPAC), supported by USAID’s Governing for Growth (G4G) project. This initiative seeks to support the creation of an enabling business environment through public and private dialogues.

While Georgia never faced anything like a wartime food crisis, the agricultural policies implemented by the Georgian Dream coalition government in 2013-2015 did not lack in ambition, seeking to make up for more than a decade of “active neglect” of Georgia’s smallholder agriculture by the Saakashvili administration. In this piece, we take a critical look at one of the first government initiatives, the Agricultural Card Program, introduced in February 2013.

The objective of the project was to review social and economic platforms of Georgian political parties in key reform areas during the 2012 parliamentary election campaign. This project, involving a coalition of Georgian think tanks and NGOs, sought to review political party platforms in key reform areas such as employment, rural development, and education during the 2012 parliamentary election campaign