TIRANA, Dec. 8- The annual Bank Of Albania Conference, entitled “Monetary Policy Strategies For Small Economies,” targeted ongoing progress by the bank, and future actions, to curb inflation through monetary policies. “Bad loans are higher than statistical data reveals so far,” Ardian Fullani, BoA governor said. The governor once again raised the issue of bad credit, accusing banks of not being transparent enough in their disclosure practices. Foreign exchange-denominated loans are especially problematic in this aspect, according to Fullani. He also said that risks increase even further if we are consider that 80 percent of used collateral is fully dependent on real estate prices. If the latter are devalued, then the risk of bad loans goes up as well. Crediting has increased steadily in supporting Albanian economic development with the last quarter of 2007 recording crediting as 27 percent of the GDP.
Deutsche Bank buys Albanian T-bills
During the conference, Fullani also announced that one of the largest European banks, Deutsche Bank, purchased lek-denominated T-bills worth 6 billion leks with a maturity term of seven years. This is the first time the BoA sold Albanian debt to an international institution. After receiving adequate credit risk assessments from Moody’s, Albanian financial institutions can now seek international financing of their public debt.
Annual prizes for economics students awarded
During the final day of the conference, Governor Fullani awarded prizes for the best diploma thesis from students who submitted their research to this competition. First prize was awarded to the joint research project of Drini Imami and Endrit Lami, master students for European Economic Studies at Tirana University and Bamberg University. The topic of their paper was “Searching for the political business cycle in Albania.” Second prize was awarded to Ersida Do袪, a student at the London Metropolitan University, whose paper was entitled, “What has been the impact of the banking sector on the economic development of Albania, 1992-2006?” Third prize went to Shkodra university student Afrim La詬 for his topic, “Tourism and its potential to diversify the economy of the Puka region.” Awarding prizes to the best research projects among business and economics students is an annual tradition through which BoA encourages and promotes students and seeks to identify excellence for its potential human resources needs.
