On April 16, the ISET Conference Hall hosted an insightful and thought-provoking public lecture by strategy consultant Levan Nadibaidze, titled “Potemkin Growth: Why Georgians Are Rushing for the Exits Amid Increasing GDP, Growing Exports, and Falling Unemployment.”

Economic development of the municipalities (outside capital) is one of the key sustainable development challenges in Georgia. The capital city of Tbilisi, while accounting for nearly 1/3 of the country’s population generates 50% of GDP and keeps expanding, whereas the municipalities, with few exceptions, are losing population and suffering from high incidence of poverty, unemployment, and slow and weak economic development.

On March 1, the ISET Policy Institute and USAID Economic Governance Program hosted a roundtable discussion on "Labor Market Challenges and Prospects" in Batumi.

Under the Georgian Constitution, the country's strategic objective is to join the European Union. The vast majority of citizens agree with and support this objective. The European future is not only the country's historical strategic choice but also the hope for the prosperity and well-being of the country's population and the promise of a better future for future generations.

The "Local Economic Development (LED) in Georgia" project, implemented by a consortium led by HELVETAS and commissioned by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), aims to strengthen Georgian actors’ involvement in LED. Moreover, it incorporates an overarching objective “to contribute to increasing employment and income of rural women and men in their localities by enhancing effective collaboration among local and national actors (public, private, civil society) for the creation of new economic opportunities.”