TIRANA, Dec. 16 – Albania saw Europe’s lowest per capita income during 2020, the pandemic year, according to Eurostat data.
And with income that was 30 percent the size of the European Union average and 39 percent of individual per capita consumption when compared to EU average, Albania also has Europe’s lowest economic wellbeing.
The data published this week by Eurostat, measures Gross Domestic Product per capita and individual per capita income, using the purchasing power parity method, and what makes income comparable between countries.
Eurostat keeps track of EU members, former member UK, candidates, the European Economic Area and Switzerland, which leaves out former Soviet states like Moldova, which typically save Albania from being at the very bottom of the continent’s poverty list.
Albania has seen no progress since 2016, remaining at the 30 percent level in GDP per capita compared to the EU average. It is also failing to grow in the convergence indicator, which looks at how fast the country’s income needs to grow to catch up with the EU average as soon as possible.
In fact, in the region, Albania is losing ground. Bosnia-Herzegovina is now 33 percent of the European average. In 2016, the difference between these two poorest countries in Europe was 1 percentage point, while in 2020 it has widened to three percentage points, according to an analysis by Monitor magazine.
North Macedonia stands at 38 percent (from 37 percent in 2016), Serbia 43 percent (from 39 percent in 2016) and Montenegro at 45 percent, although with a significant decrease from the previous year, when it had 50 percent. Kosovo’s data is not included in the survey.
In the other indicator, for individual consumption per capita, which measures the family well-being of families, Albania is again last in Europe, with 39 percent of the EU average, compared to 42 percent in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 43 percent in North Macedonia and 51 percent for Serbia and 59 percent for Montenegro.
