Top four businessmen represent half of assets, earnings among Albania’s ten richest

Tirana Times
By Tirana Times October 16, 2018 16:54

Story Highlights

  • Almost the same businessmen made it to the 2017 richest with only two new entries and the sole female entrepreneur on the 2016 list seeing herself out of the top 10, according to a study conducted by a Tirana-based think tank

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TIRANA, Oct. 16 - The top 10 richest people in Albania was an all-male list in 2017 with the top four representing more than half of total profits and assets.

Almost the same businessmen made it to the 2017 richest with only two new entries and the sole female entrepreneur on the 2016 list seeing herself out of the top 10, according to a study conducted by a Tirana-based think tank.

Samir Mane and Shefqet Kastrati were Albania’s two richest men in terms of both net worth and profits in 2017, leading the top two for the third year in a row.

Mane, whose companies are involved in retail trade with several shopping centers, construction and mining operations in Albania and the Western Balkan region, has been previously named by Wealth-X intelligence provider as Albania’s first billionaire with an estimated fortune of US$1.2 billion.

Meanwhile, Shefqet Kastrati is an Albanian oil tycoon whose company has a market share of around 50 percent in the wholesale and retail oil trade, engages in construction, road maintenance, the hotel industry and holds exclusive rights to trade luxury vehicles in Albania.

Politician Tom Doshi, a former Socialist Party MP, who was elected with the Social Democrats in his fourth consecutive term as MP in 2017, is also on the top 10. Doshi’s main business is the Profarma Albanian pharmaceutical company.

The 2017 top ten net worth and profit list also includes several businessmen operating in the construction and food and beverage distribution industry.

The Pashko European Institute, which conducted the study, says the government should consider the country’s richest entrepreneurs as a national asset and undertake a partner approach in every reform affecting them.

“It is only through mutual loyal and functional partnership that the government-business relationship has the highest yield and most positive impact on every sector of the economy and citizens’ lives,” says the study.

The Pashko European Institute is a Tirana-based think tank named after Gramoz Pashko, a late Albanian economist and politician who led the country’s shock therapy in the early 1990s when the communist regime and its planned economy collapsed.

Economy expert Besart Kadia says that Albania should be proud of its own class of capitalists who have been able to extend their investment in the region and beyond in only less than three decades of the switch to a market economy following almost half of a century under a hardline communist regime and a centrally planned economy.

“We should increase the number of millionaires in the country and not look at them with skepticism. It is in our interest, in the interest of the jobless and the poor and Albania's future. The economy has been slowing down and poverty in the country increasing. The golden decade of growth is over and what we have to do now is guarantee the sustainability of its achievements and not fight it,” says Kadia, a former director of the Pashko European Institute.

“From a society that stifled free enterprise, we should accept the new social order that not everybody has the same ability, not everybody has the same ambition and efficiency and for this reason we should not view successful entrepreneurs as people who unfairly possess assets,” says Kadia.

“Successful entrepreneurs should turn into role models for youngsters who should change their targets that political engagement and corruption are the sole methods to get rich and respected in the society,” he adds.

Albania’s inequality gap slightly narrowed in 2017 as the richest 10 percent of households spent 2.4 times more than the overwhelming 90 percent of Albanians, a modest 0.1 percent drop compared to the 2016 findings, according to a recent survey by INSTAT, the state-run statistical institute.

A person belonging to the richest 10 percent spent an average of 62,330 lek (€492) a month in 2017, slightly less compared to a year before, but 3.4 times more compared to the 90 percent of households in the bottom income decile spending an average of 18,311 lek (€144) a month.

Tirana Times
By Tirana Times October 16, 2018 16:54