Recently, Geostat has released the preliminary estimate of real GDP growth for the second quarter of 2019, which now stands at 4.5%. This is only 0.3 percentage points below ISET-PI’s recent forecast. ISET-PI’s forecast of real GDP growth for the third quarter of 2019 stands at 7.1% — 0.4 percentage points lower than last month’s prediction. The first estimate for the fourth quarter growth forecast stands at 5.5%.

The latest impact of Gavrilov’s visit to Georgia has fueled societal concerns about the economic consequences of deterioration in Russo-Georgian relations. For instance, due to the Russian government’s decision to cancel flights to Georgia, residents are beginning to worry about potentially adverse economic impacts on the tourism sector. ISET-PI has already discussed the expected impact of such a change, highlighting how these concerns might be unwarranted, as tourism accounts for 7.6% of the GDP, with Russian tourism contributing only 1.8% to the economy.

After a generation deficit of August, Georgia continues to exhibit a decreasing trend in power generation; compared to August, total electricity generation has decreased by 14% in September 2018. Georgian power plants generated 849 mln. kWh of electricity, while consumption of electricity on the local market was 955 mln. kWh.

The second presentation of the Policy Seminar Series took place on December 6, 2017. This time, Davit Hovhannisyan and Anahit Sargsyan – under the supervision of Karine Torosyan, a member of the resident faculty of ISET – led the presentation with a paper entitled “Labor Migration from Armenia and Georgia: Why Russia?”.

“The fundamental problem for Georgian security is that Russia holds all the major cards and no one is reshuffling the deck in Georgia’s favor”, writes Neil MacFarlane in his 2016 article on Georgia’s security situation. Georgia has a mighty neighbor that is not democratic, does not respect the right of self-determination of nations, and, most importantly, actually brings its military power to bear whenever Russian (legitimate or illegitimate) interests are not sufficiently honored.