Georgia’s real gross domestic product grew 6.4% year-on-year in May 2026, the National Statistics Office of Georgia, Geostat, said in its rapid estimate published on 30 June 2026. The five-month average for January through May 2026 now stands at 7.8%. The release also singled out one sector still in contraction: construction.
Geostat’s monthly print leans on VAT-payer turnover, fiscal data, and monetary statistics to deliver a near-real-time read on activity. Most of the private sector registered an annual gain in May. Construction did not. The 6.4% headline now sits ahead of every major full-year forecast for 2026 from the World Bank, the United Nations, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the gap between the headline and the building trade keeps widening.
What Geostat Reported
Geostat’s May 2026 rapid estimate puts the year-on-year change in real GDP at 6.4%, with the average for January through May at 7.8%. The agency also reported that turnover of VAT-paying companies in the private sector reached 15.7 billion GEL in May, an annual increase of 8.7%.
Geostat’s release says growth was recorded across “most sectors of the economy,” with construction the named exception. The methodology is administrative rather than survey-based, which is why the print lands within weeks of the month it covers. Geostat’s release page for May carries the date 30 June 2026, per Geostat’s May 2026 rapid estimates release.
Georgia’s monthly GDP prints have become a regular signal for markets, lenders, and the government in Tbilisi. A 6.4% annual gain in May is the second reading in a row above 6% after April’s 6.2% print. It still trails the early-2026 months, when the economy was running closer to 10%. What May’s release adds is a clearer sector split: a small list of services that kept the print alive, and one big domestic sector that did not.
| Real GDP, year-on-year | 6.4% |
| Jan-May 2026 average | 7.8% |
| May private-sector VAT turnover | 15.7 billion GEL, +8.7% y/y |
| Sectors named as growth contributors | Financial and insurance; information and communication; manufacturing; transport and warehousing |
| Sector named as declining | Construction |
| Release date | 30 June 2026 |
The Sectors That Carried the Print
Geostat listed four named contributors to May’s growth: financial and insurance activities, information and communication, manufacturing, and transport and warehousing. None of the four is a traditional construction-led sector.
The pattern matches the same broad mix that has driven the year. Q1 2026 data published separately by Geostat, per Geostat’s Q1 2026 sector breakdown, showed information and communication expanding 36.0% over a year earlier, transportation and storage by 18.0%, and financial and insurance activities by 11.7%. Arts, entertainment and recreation added 14.5% in the same period. Wholesale and retail trade, the single largest line in the GDP structure, grew 5.5%.
Services and finance have been the dominant source of upward revisions in this cycle. Manufacturing and transport, both heavily exposed to trade through the Middle Corridor and the Black Sea ports, have come in alongside the digital economy rather than against it. The implication is that May’s headline is not being carried by one outsized sector; it is being carried by the same service cluster that has defined 2026.
Geostat does not publish a sector-by-sector contribution table for May in the rapid estimate. It does name the contributors in the prose release and tags construction as the one sector “showing a decline.” That single-sentence carve-out is the release’s clearest signal about where the headline did not get its lift.
- Information and communication, listed by Geostat as a May growth contributor; up 36.0% year-on-year in Q1 2026
- Financial and insurance activities, listed by Geostat as a May growth contributor; up 11.7% year-on-year in Q1 2026
- Manufacturing, listed by Geostat as a May growth contributor
- Transport and warehousing, listed by Geostat as a May growth contributor; transportation and storage up 18.0% year-on-year in Q1 2026
Construction Stays in Contraction
Construction was the only sector Geostat named as declining in May, in both the VAT-turnover paragraph and the contributors-and-decliners summary. April 2026’s rapid estimate from Geostat, published on 29 May, said construction, along with mining and quarrying, recorded declines. The Q1 2026 release, published in mid-June, put construction’s year-on-year change at minus 2.0%. Three consecutive monthly contractions make construction the clearest drag on the 2026 headline. No other sector of similar size has been called out as a decliner this year.
Construction’s share of GDP in Q1 2026 was 6.4% of GDP, putting it in the same tier of weight as transportation and storage at 6.1%, education at 6.5%, and financial and insurance activities at 5.9%. Wholesale and retail trade sits at the top of the structure at 13.2%, followed by information and communication at 10.4% and real estate activities at 10.0%. A sector that holds 6.4% of GDP and has been contracting for at least three monthly prints is enough to bend a 6.4% headline.
| Sector | Share of Q1 2026 GDP |
|---|---|
| Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles | 13.2% |
| Information and communication | 10.4% |
| Real estate activities | 10.0% |
| Manufacturing | 8.2% |
| Public administration and defence | 7.2% |
| Education | 6.5% |
| Construction | 6.4% |
| Transportation and storage | 6.1% |
| Financial and insurance activities | 5.9% |
Through 2026 So Far
Geostat has now published its quarterly estimate for Q1 2026 and three monthly rapid estimates in the post-Q1 window: March, April, and May. Each month on its own has printed above 6%, but the running average is being pulled up by Q1; the five-month average of 7.8% reflects Q1’s stronger reading.
Q1 2026 as a whole ran at 9.0% in real terms against Q1 2025, per Geostat’s quarterly estimate, which also reported GDP at current prices of 24,774.6 million GEL with a GDP deflator of 2.3%.
April’s print came in at 6.2%, with a January-to-April average of 8.3%. May’s 6.4% is the second month in the 6% range after Q1 averaged 9.0%. The release lifts the year-to-date average from 8.3% to 7.8%. The deceleration, not the headline number, is the part of the curve that has done the most work this year.
- Q1 2026: 9.0% real GDP growth year-on-year (current-price GDP 24,774.6 million GEL; deflator 2.3%).
- April 2026: 6.2% real GDP growth year-on-year; January-April average 8.3%.
- May 2026: 6.4% real GDP growth year-on-year; January-May average 7.8%.
Already Above the Annual Forecasts
The major full-year forecasts for 2026, all published before Geostat’s May release, sit between 5% and 5.5%. The United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects 2026 report projected growth of 5.4%. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Asian Development Bank both forecast 5%. The World Bank put 2026 growth at 5.5%.
Geostat’s five-month average of 7.8% is the strongest running average of any window in 2026 so far, and construction is still shrinking. Geostat publishes its monthly rapid estimate using administrative data rather than survey-based national accounts, so the monthly print and the annual forecasts are not directly comparable at every level. Both the running average and the May print sit above the full-year forecasts made earlier in the year.
Disclaimer: Figures cited in this article reflect Geostat’s rapid estimates as published on 30 June 2026; they are accurate as of that release and may be revised in subsequent quarterly national accounts. Past growth does not guarantee future performance, and readers should consult qualified professionals before drawing investment or business conclusions from these data.
