Corruption significant problem in Albania despite reforms

TIRANA, Aug. 14 – A survey published by the World Bank recently said that firms in Albania continued to report corruption to be rife in the country in 2005. The new World Bank report.
Albania is one of the exceptions to the positive trend of lower corruption, said the report. The country has passed many reforms and has some of the best public administration institutions in the region. However, from the point of view of firms, ineffective implementation left corruption levels unchanged or worse from 2002 to 2005. Albania’s new government, which took office soon after the survey was completed, has firmly committed to carrying out reforms, so the next round of the BEEPS survey will help to measure progress.
The multi-country effort, which combines modernization of customs administration, institutional reform, and increased transparency, is reducing both border clearance times and bribery of customs officials. Albanian is part of the program.
Anticorruption in Transition 3ؗho is Succeeding ŠAnd Why? (ACT3) takes a detailed look at firm-level survey data and concludes that the region’s progress in reducing corruption is unmistakable. ACT3 is the third in a series of World Bank reports tracking levels of corruption in enterprise-state interactions since 1999. ACT3draws on the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS), a joint initiative of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank. The triennial survey, conducted most recently in 2005, covers 26 former socialist countries and Turkey, as well as five western European comparator countries. The non-transition European comparators are Germany, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. More than 20,000 firms have been interviewed since the inception of BEEPS.