In his blog post “The puzzle of agricultural productivity in Georgia and Armenia” , Adam Pellillo raises the following question:
Georgia seems to be the only former Soviet republic in which agricultural productivity hasn’t returned to or exceeded its level in 1992. As of 2010, agricultural productivity stood at only 77 percent of where it was at nearly two decades ago. Why hasn’t agricultural productivity improved in Georgia over the past two decades, while it has at least recovered in every other former Soviet republic? It is even more p...
ISET Economist Blog
A blog about economics in the South Caucasus.
Nov
26
Oct
22
Starting from October 15, Georgian consumers have to pay about 5-10 tetri more for one loaf of bread. Many large producers increased their prices; smaller bakeries (“tone”) followed suit by either raising the price or reducing the weight of the traditional Georgian bread. While unpleasant, this change in the price of bread is nothing but a forced reaction to a sharp increase (25%) in the price of wheat in the global commodity markets dating back to July 2012. The question, therefore, is not why bread and flour prices increased. Rather, it is why these po...
Oct
12
While more than half of all jobs in Georgia are in the agricultural sector, agriculture’s share of value added to GDP was only 11 percent in 2007 (World Bank). And although Georgia was a major producer of food, wine, tea, and mineral water during Soviet times, most of the food products on the shelves today are imported from abroad (FAO).
Yet what is even more remarkable is that Georgia seems to be the only former Soviet republic in which agricultural productivity hasn’t returned to or exceeded its level in 1992. As of 2010, agricultural productivity stoo...
Sep
29
The YFN Georgia blog offers an interesting angle to the opening of the new Kutaisi airport:
A major hindrance to the development of high-value horticulture exports from western Georgia is the limited availabity of air freight capacity from Batumi Airport. Most flights from Batumi are oriented towards Ukraine; only one service to the Persian Gulf is available, to Kuwait City. Hopefully Kutaisi will offer airfreight routes to Dubai and Qatar, which will provide new markets for high value cut flowers, citrus and fresh herbs.
Check out the othe...
Sep
18
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...
Our Partners
