Albania ranked among the worst for property rights

TIRANA, March 13 – Albania ranked 100th out of 129 countries covered in the 2011 International Property Rights Index report and 16th out of 24th countries in central/Eastern Europe/Russia group, according to a study carried out by US-based Property Rights Alliance.
However, Albania increased its International Property Rights Index score for the fifth year in a row to 4.4. While political stability and control of corruption remained fairly constant, Albania saw its legal and political environment jump 0.7 points thanks largely to an increase in survey-based judicial independence from 2.4 to 4.7.
Albania also showed solid improvement, largely driven by a 0.9 increase in protection of physical property. The physical property rights jump would have been larger were it not for a 0.4 fall in access to loans, which nearly wiped out last year’s gains in this sub-component.
Intellectual property rights rose a whole point thanks to higher scores for copyright piracy and protection of intellectual property, which increased from 2.4 to 4.
The 2011 International Property Rights Index (IPRI) is an international comparative study that measures the significance of both physical and intellectual property rights and their protection for economic well-being. In order to incorporate and grasp the important aspects related to property rights protection, the Index focuses on three areas: Legal and Political Environment (LP), Physical Property Rights (PPR), and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). The current study analyzed data for 129 countries around the globe, representing ninety-seven percent of world GDP.