ISET Policy Institute likes to keep our tradition alive and cook up a New Year’s Supra Index for our readers every year. The Index shows the cost of a standard festive “supra” meal for a family of five or six people in each region of Georgia. Traditional dishes included in our calculations are: mtsvadi (grilled cubes of meat), satsivi (chicken in walnut sauce), khachapuri, trout, (pan-fried) chicken tabaka, salad Olivie, pkhali (chopped and minced vegetables with walnut), cucumber and tomato salad, and for dessert, fruit and gozinaki (caramelized walnuts fried in honey). The price of the New Year’s supra, of course, depends on the variety of dishes served for the feast.

The real GDP growth rate amounted to -3.9% year-on-year for October 2020. Consequently, the estimated real GDP for the first ten months of 2020 was -5.1%. Recently, GeoStat released its preliminary estimate of real GDP growth for the first and second quarters of 2020. The Q1 and Q2 growth rates were revised downward to 2.2% (by 0.1 ppt) and -13.2% (by 0.9 ppt) respectively.

The average cost of cooking one standard portion of Imeretian khachapuri stood at 4.62 GEL in November 2020. This is 4.5% higher MoM (compared to October 2020), and 12% higher YoY (in comparison to November of 2019). The index maintaining an upward trend at this time of the year is typical and relates to the increasing price of cheese (due to the reduced supply of fresh milk).

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.

In October 2020, the Khachapuri Index continued its upward trend and reached 4.37 GEL. This figure is 2.9% higher than the previous month (September 2020) and 12.5% higher than October 2019 (YoY). Every ingredient contributed to the YoY Khachapuri Index inflation: cheese (19.0%), flour (16.3%), butter (12.4%), yeast (16.4%), milk (2.8%), and eggs (0.3%).