BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 1
By Tamilla Mammadova – Trend:
According to preliminary estimates, GDP decline was 11.5 percent year-on-year in January 2021 in Georgia, Trend reports via the TBC Capital report.
As reported, the decline was mainly observed in construction, transportation, entertainment, manufacturing, real estate activities, and wholesale and retail trade. On the contrary, information & communication and financial and insurance activities displayed positive growth rates in January when compared to the same period of the previous year.
While the drop was large, still it was in line with expectations as the decline reflects the high base effect a year ago, the reintroduction of the second lockdown, and still depressed tourism and related industries.
"Although a sizable tourism recovery is not expected in the coming months, the drop in GDP should still moderate substantially as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was somewhat visible already in February 2020," the report said.
More importantly, amid softening lockdown measures in February 2021, the recovery in the number of sectors was evident based on the TBC Capital Tracking the Recovery data.
"We expect March growth to be even better due to even lower base effect and further easing of lockdown measures as announced by the Government. Overall, also taking into account that due to seasonally weak activity January makes up only around 6.8 percent of the full-year GDP, we leave our latest projection of GDP recovering by around 4 percent in 2021 and rebounding by 7.5 percent in 2022 unchanged", the report reads.
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