According to Geostat, the 2019 real GDP growth in Georgia was 5.1% year-over-year (YoY). This figure moderately surpassed NBG’s, ADB’s, EBRD’s, IMF’s and the World Bank’s latest growth projections for 2019, which range from 4.5%-4.7%. However, the real winner in this race was ISET-PI’s annual GDP growth forecast; in May 2019, we predicted a 4.9% annual growth.

High and rising levels of foreign currency indebtedness have been an important topic in Georgia over the past several years. To address this issue and protect borrowers from currency risks, the National Bank of Georgia (NBG), as well as the Georgian Government have implemented regulations to hinder excess indebtedness. Let’s have a look at the timeline (Figure 1) of recent lending regulations and the accompanying monetary policy measures and observe their impact on changing lending patterns in the Georgian economy.

On December 5, the Effective Data Visualization workshop – which was hosted by ISET in collaboration with ForSet and DarkHorse Analytics of Canada – officially came to a close when an award ceremony was held for those participants whose academic performance, significant achievements in data-related economics subjects and outstanding motivation to build future careers in the data-driven economy were of the highest. The winning team received a prize worth 1000 lari.

On October 25th, ISET was visited by Dr. Robert A. Lawson of the Fraser Institute. In a highly entertaining and often humorous lecture, Dr. Lawson discussed a wide variety of topics, including the notion of economic freedom, research into economic liberty, as well as Georgian reforms since 2004, and recommendations for future development.

ISET-PI’s growth projections for the second and third quarters of 2019 were revised upward by less than 0.1 percentage points. They now stand at 4.8% and 7.5% respectively. Geostat has increased the estimate of the average real GDP growth for the first quarter of 2019 to 4.9% (by around 0.2 percentage points).