TIRANA, April 18 – Albania’s ruling Socialist Party-led majority has paved the way for contract negotiations with a Dubai-based company which has offered to invest $250 million on a 350-meter high tower in Tirana in return for a 25,000 m2 construction site and being stripped of taxes for 15 years from the start of its operations.
The proposal on the “Iconic Tower” investment, which would be the country’s tallest, has been made by Dubai-based Al Habtoor Investment LLC, the international investment arm of the Al habtoor Group, which already manages 14 hotels in Dubai and in the U.S., U.K., Austria, Hungary and Lebanon. The 25,000 m2 construction site is planned to be awarded free of charge at the extension of Tirana’s boulevard near the former train station, already under construction. The company plans to use the skyscraper as a commercial, entertainment, hotel and residential center.
Under the law approved by the ruling majority, Albania would benefit investment at about a quarter of its annual FDI of $1 billion and about 3,000 m2 of facilities that will serve as the new seat of the Tirana Municipality. If contract negotiations successfully conclude, the United Arab Emirates-based company will be stripped of customs duties, corporate income tax and every other capital gains tax for 15 years from the start of its commercial operations.
The project is part of incentives Albania offers to attract foreign direct investment.
In mid-2015, a UK-based company also offered to invest a staggering $5 billion on the construction of a new port, a regasification terminal and a thermal power plant in a special economic zone in central Albania, but contract negotiations failed to materialize.
The project proposed by UK-based Star Bridge Port Developments Limited in Karpen village of Kavaja, some 17 km from the country’s biggest port of Durres, was at about half of Albania’s GDP and was supposed to create 6,200 jobs.
