Georgia’s real GDP growth is likely to hover around 3.3% in 2016

Details: Created: 02 March 2016

ISET-PI has updated its forecast for Georgia’s real GDP growth rate for the first two quarters of 2016. Here are the highlights of this month’s releases:

• According to Geostat estimates, Georgia’s annual real GDP growth in 2015 was 2.8%. ISET-PI’s annual GDP growth forecast of 2.9% annual growth (since September 2015) thus turned out to be quite accurate, just 0.1 percentage point above the official estimate.
• According to Geostat’s newly-released rapid estimates, GDP growth in January 2016 was 0.8% year on year.

• ISET-PI’s forecast for the first quarter of 2016 now stands at 2.9% – down from 3.5% in January. The second quarter growth forecast now stands at 5.0%. Download the full report

GDP Forecast Methodology

The Georgian Index of Leading Economic Indicators provides current-quarter and one-quarter-ahead GDP forecasts for those who need to make business and policy decisions and cannot wait until the official statistics are announced several months later. According to methodology, our forecast is similar to those conducted by leading research institutes around the world. In particular, ISET-PI adapted the methodology that was originally developed by the New Economic School to forecast GDP for the Russian Federation. We would like to acknowledge the help of Prof. Konstantin Styrin (NES) who agreed to share his MATLAB code with ISET-PI, and the assistance of Dr. Andrei Sarychev in modifying and adapting the code for Georgia‘s needs.