Georgia’s National Statistics Office (GeoStat) reported that the Consumer Price Index rose 0.4% in September 2026 from August and stood 5.6% above September 2025. The annual core inflation rate was 3.7%, while core inflation excluding tobacco was 3.5%. These are three different measures: the monthly change compares adjacent months, the annual rate compares the same month a year earlier, and the core rates remove specified parts of the basket. They should not be read as interchangeable descriptions of a single price movement. The release is dated 2 October 2026 and covers the September reference month.

The monthly comparison was led by increases in transport prices, up 2.9%, and health, up 2.8%; clothing and footwear rose 1.7%, and restaurants and hotels 1.2%. Education was the largest offset: its prices fell 12.2% from August, and GeoStat says the group reduced the overall monthly inflation rate by 0.51 percentage points. Transport added 0.36 points and health 0.22 points. Food and non-alcoholic beverages declined 0.2% over the month. The group-level contributions do not sum exactly to the headline because of rounding. A group’s percentage price change and its contribution to the total are separate quantities: the contribution also reflects its weight in the consumption basket.

On an annual basis, transport prices were 18.7% higher than a year earlier and contributed 2.2 percentage points to overall inflation. Food and non-alcoholic beverages increased 3.4%, contributing 1.24 points; housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels rose 9.2%, contributing 0.89 points; and health rose 8.0%, contributing 0.66 points. Education prices were 12.5% lower than in September 2025 and subtracted 0.55 points. Within transport, personal-transport operating costs rose 25.8% and transport services 14.9%. Within food, fish increased 18.1%, meat 9.0% and bread and cereals 6.9%, while fruit and grapes declined 4.3%. Within housing, actual rents rose 10.9% and electricity, gas and other fuels 10.5%. These are selected components in the official release, not an exhaustive account of household budgets.

GeoStat defines core inflation by excluding food and non-alcoholic beverages, energy, regulated tariffs and specific transport tariffs. Its core measure excluding tobacco removes tobacco as well as the listed groups. The methodology note says Georgia’s CPI covers prices for private-consumption goods and services acquired by residents, both inside and outside the country; it excludes government and institutional households. The 2026 consumer basket contains 305 goods and services in 12 groups, with weights based primarily on national accounts consumption structure and supplemented by the Integrated Household Survey. GeoStat updates the basket annually to reflect expenditure patterns. Thus the CPI is a weighted index for a defined population and basket, not a direct record of every price paid by every household.

Prices are collected monthly, generally from the 10th to the 20th, in retail and service outlets in six cities: Tbilisi, Kutaisi, Batumi, Gori, Telavi and Zugdidi. The methodology note describes the basket as common across the six cities and says the overall index combines city-level measures using city weights. The office collects representative item prices, validates observations and checks large deviations. GeoStat publishes several comparison bases, including previous month, corresponding month of the prior year and the 12-month average against the previous 12-month average. September’s 0.4% monthly figure is not the same as that rolling-average measure. These data describe measured consumer-price changes; the release itself does not establish their causes, household-specific inflation, or future price movements.