Berisha attends UN conference on informal economy

TIRANA, June 15 – Prime Minister Sali Berisha was at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Friday to take part in an international conference, organized by the U.N. on transitional economies and applying laws in a market economy.
The conference is hosted by Hernando de Soto, the head of the Institute for Freedom and Demcoracy, who has also came to Albania and helped in reforms on taxation and the informal economy.
Berisha is to make a presentation regarding the country’s economic development and reforms.
Last month, the U.N. launched and included Albania in an experimental project of streamlining its operations in Albania in an effort to increase the impact and eliminate bureaucracy, and ending overlapping and fragmentation of the agencies’ work in the country.
Albania was selected as one of eight countries, including Cape Verde, Mozambique, Pakistan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uruguay and Vietnam to pilot the One U.N. Initiative that will try to improve implementation of the U.N. agencies’ projects and effectiveness.
U.N. and Albanian government experts will work intensively to coordinate efforts on the country’s priority to join the European Union and coordinate the aid of other international partners in the country’s reforms toward its integration efforts into international institutions.
Albania, one of Europe’s poorest countries with more than one-fifth of the population living under poverty line of US$2 per day, signed a pre-membership agreement with the European Union last year and hopes to join NATO by 2008.