Albania ranks poor in ‘Lisbon Review 2010’

TIRANA, May 11 – Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina rank at the bottom of the list of 11 non-EU countries on competitiveness, behind all the Balkan states and Azerbaijan, Turkey, Georgia, Ukraine, and Armenia. While Albania shows comparative strengths in enterprise environment and social conclusion, both countries rank low in all other indicators, and significantly below EU averages in information society innovation and R&D network industries and financial services, said the World Economic Forum in its ‘Lisbon Review 2010’ report.
According to the report, serious efforts must be made to bring the two countries more in line with EU standards in the areas addressed by the Forum.
The report looked at areas including information society, innovation and R&D, liberalisation, network industries, financial services, and enterprise environment, as well as social inclusion and sustainable development.
Albania’s comparative strength is in the enterprise environment, where it is just barely behind the Accession 12 average and not far behind the EU27 score. It is also ranked 3rd out of the 11 countries for efforts towards social inclusion, although its score of 3.94 is well below those of the two strongest performers of the group, Azerbaijan and Montenegro.
The study published on Sunday is the fifth and final review of the progress made by EU countries in achieving the goals for reform set out in the Lisbon Strategy, and it also measures the performance of EU candidate countries and EU potential candidate countries.