Baku, Azerbaijan, October 1
By Tamilla Mammadova – Trend:
Remittances and tourism showed significant yearly increases in Georgia in July of 2019, Trend reports citing ISET-PI, think-tank of International School of Economics at Tbilisi State University.
Money transfers rose by 7 percent in the seventh month of 2019, driven by remittances from Kyrgyzstan (+98 percent), Poland (+64.9 percent), Ukraine (+46.5 percent), Italy (+26.5 percent), Greece (+13.3 percent).
Remittances from the Russian Federation and Turkey experienced a slight yearly decline and had negative contributions of 2.8 and 1 percentage points respectively to the total growth of remittances. Nevertheless, Russia remains the top country of origin for money inflows, accounting for 25 percent of total remittances. The share of money inflow from the European Union amounted to 35 percent of the total.
The number of international visitors increased by only 4.3 percent in July, compared to the same month of the previous year, while the number of tourists increased by 1 percent annually and reached 65 percent of total number of international visitors. The negative shock of the prohibition of flights from Russia has already started to be reflected in the data, but the impact will be even stronger in the following reports of the GDP forecast. Overall, trade, tourism, and remittances had a significant positive contribution to the GDP growth forecast.
Nevertheless, foreign direct investment (FDI) in Georgia amounted to $187 million in the second quarter of 2019, which is 53.7 percent lower than the adjusted data from second quarter of 2018.
In addition, FDI experienced notable reductions in the energy (37.6 percent yearly), construction (91 percent), transport (58.6 percent), communication (162.3 percent), real estate (63.7 percent ) and financial (153.8 percent) sectors, while FDI increased notably in agriculture (231.7 percent) and manufacturing (97.3 percent).