For the third quarter of 2022, business confidence in Georgia increased (by 2.6 index points) and reached 17.7. The highest increase in business confidence is observed in the construction (+13.8) sector. The positive change in BCI for Q3 2022 was driven by significantly improved past performance - that is according to the latest publication of ISET Policy Institute (ISET-PI).
The Past Performance Index, which considers the business sector's assessment of their own economic performance in the previous quarter, increased by 16.2 points compared to Q2 2022 and reached 6.7 for Q3 2022, with service (+38.7), and construction (+30.8) sectors showing the greatest improvement.
The Chairman of the Georgian Shopping Centers Association Levan Karalashvili says that businesses are cautiously optimistic about the current situation, although the sector has to work in rather difficult conditions in the face of a number of challenges. In his interview with BMG TV, Karalashvili notes that the sector is still stably developing and is more or less returning to pre-pandemic level.
“Cautious optimism has not gone away…We have to operate in rather difficult conditions. However, in the short term, we see positive changes. Our sector has proven to be quite resilient to the challenges we face today, be it regional conflict or economic fluctuations. We are more or less back to the 2019 figure. We can say that our industry is developing steadily,” the Chairman says.
Once the pandemic ended people started spending their savings. On its side, businesses learned how to plan well, manage inventory and retain employees. Added to this is a large influx of migrants. All these people spend money, which has a positive effect on the retail chains that are represented in our shopping centers,” says Levan Karalashvili.
Karalashvili named unpredictability as the main challenge for the businesses.
“The unpredictable environment still remains a challenge. Although we have shown sustainability and do not expect large fluctuations in our sector. Of course, inflation remains a common problem, but the lari remains more or less stable, and this will not cause big fluctuations in the direction of shopping centers,” says the chairman of the Association of Shopping Centers of Georgia.
