
Since its start, the pandemic has spread to more than 180 countries, with governments around the world each reacting differently to the new global threat. The Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker gauges the strictness of countries’ responses using a stringency index, which compares governmental policies over several dimensions.

Identifying barriers to youth entrepreneurship in Georgia studying the Georgian entrepreneurship ecosystem. The study aims to identify the barriers youth entrepreneurship in Georgia faces and proposes interventions, which could be led by relevant actors within the ecosystem, to overcome the challenges.

From a trade perspective, the most important aspects of the EU-Georgia Association Agreement, signed on 27 June 2014, including the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA), are the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures and the food safety standards and technical regulations required for access to European markets. Georgia’s export to the EU is still rather limited, and one possible cause for this deficiency, amongst others, is the limited capacity to comply with food safety regulations and standards.

Agricultural and rural development play an important role in the country’s socio-economic development. The restrictions imposed during the pandemic have hindered spring agricultural works which have significantly worsened conditions for farmers and stalled their future potential. Consequently, the Georgian government developed an anti-crisis plan, “Caring for Farmers and Agriculture”, that was presented on 12 March. The proposal entails two forms of aid: direct assistance and sectoral support.

In March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global economy started to sink into what is expected to be the deepest worldwide recession since World War II. Despite unprecedented policy support, the majority of countries have failed to soften the fallout from the crisis. According to World Bank estimates, global GDP will contract by 5.2% year over year (y/y) in 2020. The United States and Euro Area are projected to shrink by 6.1% and 9.1% respectively, while the Chinese economy is expected to grow at just 1% in 2020.