Kyrgyzstan bought more Georgian exports than China did — and Türkiye sold Georgia the most

Over January to September 2026 Kyrgyzstan was Georgia's largest export destination at $650.2 million, ahead of China at $583.1 million and Azerbaijan at $566.7 million. The ten largest destinations together took 67.8% of all exports. Kyrgyzstan topping the table is not a sign of a Central Asian consumer boom; it is the destination end of the car re-export trade, and it rises and falls with vehicles bought at auction, landed at Poti or Batumi and driven east.

On the import side Türkiye led with $2.19 billion, followed by China at $1.75 billion and the United States at $1.72 billion. The ten largest sources accounted for 69.2% of total imports. The American figure is almost entirely the supply end of the same car corridor; the Turkish figure is the one that shows up in a construction budget, since it covers building materials, fittings and manufactured goods that a Georgian developer buys at a price set in Istanbul and in Turkish lira.

Passenger cars were the single largest export at $1.53 billion, or 24.9% of all exports, and the single largest import at $2.65 billion, or 18.4% of all imports. Petroleum and petroleum products came second in both directions: $811.8 million out and $1.41 billion in. After that, exports were led by precious metal ores and concentrates at $464 million, and imports by packaged medicinal products at $526.8 million. Those commodity shares imply total exports of roughly $6.1 billion and imports of roughly $14.4 billion for the nine months — our own arithmetic from the published percentages, not a Geostat figure.

Two reasons. First, a quarter of Georgia's export earnings resting on re-exported cars is a concentration risk: a change in one buyer country's import rules can remove a large share of dollar inflows in a single quarter, and dollar inflows are what underwrite the lari and, through it, construction costs and mortgage rates. Second, with Türkiye as the dominant import source, a move in the Turkish lira or in Turkish export prices reaches a Georgian building site faster than most domestic news does. If you are budgeting a renovation or a build for 2027, the exchange rate you should be watching is not only the dollar.