ISET-PI has updated its forecast of Georgia’s real GDP growth rate for the first and second quarters of 2019. These are the main features of this month’s release:

Geostat has published its rapid estimate of real GDP growth for the fourth quarter of 2018, and their estimated growth stands at 4.8%, which is 1.1 percentage point above ISET-PI’s most recent forecast.

Utilizing the latest data, real annual GDP growth in 2018 amounted to 4.8%. It is notable that by March of 2018, our model predicted 4.8% real growth in the “middle-of-the-road” scenario that now perfectly coincides with the official statistics. Moreover, our annual GDP forecasts of 4.7% (since November) and 4.6% (since December), equally were revealed to be quite accurate.

ISET-PI’s forecast for the first quarter of 2019 now stands at 4.1% - up from 3.1% in January. The second-quarter growth forecast currently stands at 4.2%.

Based on the data from December, we expect annual growth in 2019 to be 4.1% in the worst-case scenario, and 5.2% in the best-case or an average long-term growth scenario. Our middle-of-the-road scenario (based on the average growth in the last four quarters) predicts a 4.4% increase in real GDP.