Albania to launch one-stop shop on foreign investments

TIRANA, March 3 – Albania will soon launch a one-stop shop on foreign investments in an effort to boost foreign capital and create new jobs, Prime Minister Edi Rama has said. Speaking in a recent meeting with Italian investors in Rome, the Prime Minister said government would soon approve a new law on foreign investments.
“We are preparing a special package with incentives for investments in manufacturing because we need more jobs. In April, we will approve a law on foreign investments in Albania and one of the things we intend to do is the creation of a one-stop shop on foreign investors. This means that despite investments in tourism, transport, energy or telecommunication, foreign investors will be served at a one-stop shop,” said Rama.
The Socialist Party-led government has recently brought back the Albania 1 Euro initiative, offering state-owned assets for a symbolic price of 1 Euro in return for investments and job creation. The government initiative is an effort to make Albania more attractive to foreign investors after the corporate income tax was raised to 15 percent this year, angering the business community which opposed the initiative as making Albania less competitive compared to other regional countries applying 10 percent flat tax regimes.
FDI, which in 2012 ranked Albania as the second largest recipient in South-East Europe, continued positively performing in the first three quarters of 2013 when it rose by 27 percent to 712 million euros, up from 562 million euros during the same period a year ago, registering a record high for the first three quarters of a year, according to Bank of Albania data. The FDI was boosted by privatization and investments in hydropower plants.
A UN report shows Albania attracted USD 957 million in foreign direct investment in 2012, down 7.6 percent compared to 2011, but remained the second largest FDI recipient among six transition economies of the South-East Europe after Croatia.
FDI stagnated in 2012 when it registered Euro 745 million, exactly the same level compared to 2011 but lower compared to the peak inflow of Euro 793 million in 2010, which for the first time made Albania one of the largest FDI recipients in South East Europe.
Central bank data total FDI stock almost doubled in the past few years climbing from Euro 1.8 billion in 2007 to Euro 3 billion in 2011.