Looking down from the famous cross-path of the Georgian Military Highway, you will notice a beautiful little lake that was not there six years ago. The lake is a small reservoir that supplies power to the 8 MW Aragvi HPP. On May 19, the ISET community and guests from professional circles in energy sector heard the story behind this hydro power plant in a seminar entitled “Small Hydro power – what’s special about it and how to implement it?” delivered by Hanness Posch, a civil engineer and entrepreneur working on hydropower projects in Georgia.
Mr. Posch’s engagement with Georgia started soon after Austrian investors rebuilt the Gudauri Ski resort in 1986. Mr. Posch was invited as an engineer to prepare a hydropower project to ensure a stable power supply for the resort. In the meantime, while preparing the project on the Aragvi river, Gudauri investors sold their shares in the resort and Mr. Posch was left as the sole participant in the project without enough resources to implement it. After finding Georgian partners, a company was registered and long search for the necessary funding started. Years later in 2011, the Austro-Georgian company found the money and commenced construction of their first 8 MW Aragvi HPP project.
On May 13, 2016 ISET hosted the head of the IMF in Georgia, Azim Sadikov, who delivered a lecture for participants of ISET’s Finance Course for Professionals. The subject of his lecture was “Macro-economic challenges in Georgia and the strengths and weaknesses of its emerging capital markets”.
During his presentation, Mr. Sadikov discussed existing macroeconomic challenges for Georgia. He emphasized the current account deficit as the most important problem for the Georgian economy, which resulted in one of the highest net foreign liabilities to GDP ratio (136%) in Central and Western Asia. In order to finance this deficit, Georgia borrows from abroad, increasing the NFL of the country. The good news, however, is that this NFL is made up of FDI, which is considered to be a very stable source of funding. Mr. Sadikov then highlighted the importance of FDI in productive labor-intensive sectors, which will ensure production growth and accumulation of incomes from these investments in Georgia.
On May 6, ISET hosted Shang-Jin Wei, Chief Economist at the Asian Development Bank. He gave a presentation entitled 'Asian Development Outlook 2016 – Asia’s Potential Growth'.
According to the key messages of the presentation, development growth in Asia softens to 5.7% in 2016 and 2017 from last year. Furthermore, while CPI (Consumer Price Index) inflation subdued, many economies face harmful PPI (Producer Price Index) deflation. In addition, reforms to raise labor productivity can invigorate developing Asia’s potential growth.
Given the data of the outlook, Asia still accounts for 60% of global growth in PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) terms, or 40% in market exchange rate terms. Moreover, slow recovery in global commodity prices will keep CPI (Consumer Price Index) at a low level in Asia.
Our Partners
