The ISET Policy Institute, together with the National Bank of Georgia and the National Statistics Office of Georgia (GeoStat) hosted a two-day conference on financial soundness indicators for Georgia with the financial support of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The event took place on 12-13 June 2014 at the Hotel Radisson Blu Iveria in Tbilisi.

Financial soundness indicators (FSI) are statistical measures compiled to monitor the health and soundness of financial institutions and markets. FSIs include aggregated information on financial institutions and indicators that are representative of the markets in which financial institutions operate.

The conference was aimed at facilitating better compilation, understanding and analysis of the financial soundness indicators of Georgia.

The ADB has been supporting Georgia’s efforts to strengthen its institutional and statistical capacity to routinely collect, compile, analyze and disseminate internationally comparable FSIs. The cooperation has proven productive and in the scope of the project seven new indicators were compiled based on the surveys of pawnshops and non-financial corporations conducted by GeoStat. The ISET Policy Institute also compiled and analyzed real estate price indices based on the listings found on real estate portals.

The availability of better quality and internationally comparable FSIs will help improve the surveillance of financial systems in Georgia.

In addition to being very fruitful, this initiative is distinguished for being a fine example of tight cooperation between a think tank and governmental institutions.