Call for banking transactions to tackle informality

TIRANA, May.16 – In the battle of fighting the informal economy, the administration has presented a new legal draft that requires businesses to make any transactions worth more than 300,000 lek through the banking system. Moreover, all salary transactions should go through the banking system as well or they will not be recognized as expenditures in the balance sheets presented to tax authorities. Difficulties that are predicted include the non-coverage of the entire territory from the banking services as well as the frequency of the transactions given the small-limit sum.
Regarding the salary transactions, the government has not yet realized this for its own budget salaries, which in rural areas are done through the postal service. The Finance Minister Bode has praised this decision as tackling informality. Albania has the highest rate of cash circulation and cash transactions in the entire region, more than twice the rate in Serbia and Macedonia, Bode said. The BoA governor said that if the measure is to work, it will need the consent and the commitment of entrepreneurs. Rdvan Bode identified a large problem being the high use of foreign exchange in transactions and claimed that a new law is needed to remove all foreign exchange within informal open markets and leave the foreign exchange transactions to the banking system and licensed agencies. In recommending the new draft law, Finance Minster Bode called upon commercial banks to lower their service fees in order to attract more business customers into the banking channels.