Located only 800m from the South Ossetian border, the village of Kvemo Nikozi was swept by the invading Russian troops in August 2008. Three years later, it became a subject of an interesting economic experiment: a farmer coop.
Nikozi cooperative is anything but a grassroots initiative. The Ministry of Agriculture and the Agricultural Development Fund (ADF) played a key role in bringing all the stakeholders together, planting the seeds of cooperation, and providing all the essential inputs to keep this exotic flower alive.
Nikozi is also not quite a coop...
ISET Economist Blog
A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
Sep
18
Sep
05
As reported in our Khachapuri Index Column, the prices of key khachapuri ingredients have started rising in July, given their strong correlation with the annual cycle of agricultural production in Georgia. A standard portion of Imeretian khachapuri can now be cooked at slightly more than 3GEL, on average. Now, while 3GEL does not sound like a lot for the expats and the better off Georgians, it may be beyond reach for many of the less fortunate Georgian households. To remind ourselves: about 9.2% of Georgia’s population (close to 400,000 people) are ...
Aug
07
Competitiveness is an elusive term that can mean different things to different people. Moreover, there is no consensus on how a country can become competitive. For instance, South Korea’s economic breakthrough in 1960s and 1970s was arguably promoted through government-induced investment in (and protection of) particular sectors of the economy (e.g. steel, ship building and electronics) which were deemed to be potentially “competitive”. Alternatively, rather than picking winners (something bureaucrats are said to be bad at), governments could promote com...
Jul
30
Despite arduous government efforts to reduce regional disparities, population and wealth are very unevenly distributed across Georgia’s territory. The largest city, Tbilisi, is pulling scarce human and financial resources away from other major cities, which in turn compete with smaller towns and villages in their immediate locale. Tbilisi’s population is already more than five times larger than that of Kutaisi, the second largest Georgian city (200,000 people). And while no precise data is available the gap is likely to be growing further.
In principle, ...
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