World Bank findings on business costs dismissed as untrue

TIRANA, July 4 – Albania’s National Registration Centre has described the findings of a recently released IFC-World Bank that ranked business costs in Albanian cities as the highest in region as untrue.
Tom Kola, the director of the National Registration Centre said that the latest Doing Business in Southeast Europe 2011 IFC-World Bank report contains mistakes about the time businesses need to register and their costs. According to him, in Albania businesses can register in one day and at a modest 100 lek (1 US dollar) fee.
The World Bank report said the costs of opening a business in Tirana is the highest in the 22 regional cities, and five times more than the EU average standing at 31.4 percent of income per capita. The Albanian cities– covered in the report analyzing the ease of doing business in 22 cities from seven economies including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, FYR Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, and Serbia– were Tirana, Durres, Shkodra and Vlora.
Albania’s National Registration Center was established in 2007 as a new central public institution, which functions as a single window where the entrepreneur can complete company registration, tax registration, social insurance, health insurance and labor directorate registration using a single application procedure. According to law no. 9723 “on National Registration Center: NRC” it takes 1 day to register at the NR since the electronic registry is now fully operational and has increased in capacity.