
The increasing proportion of renewable energy in the world’s overall energy supply indicates the growing popularity of renewable energy globally. From 2010 to 2021, this percentage rose from 3.2% to 5.2%, while modern bioenergy increased from 5.7% to 6.7%.

As a result of the update, the growth forecast for Q1 of 2023 was reduced by 0.1 percentage points to 2.6%. ISET PI’s second forecast for Q2 of 2023 puts GDP growth at a positive 1.6%.

The term “dollarization”, commonly used among academic economists and finance specialists, has already entered Georgians’ everyday vocabulary. Few people, however, understand what dollarization is, how it comes about and why they should care. Below we try to fill this gap, explaining some basic concepts and discussing why and how dollarization affects ordinary people’s lives.

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.