“We are looking to emerge from the status of a donor country and find a cooperation partner at the same level in Albania,” said Parliamentary State Secretary Ernst Burgbacher
TIRANA, Oct. 8 – Germany is seeking to intensify economic cooperation with Albania, a senior German government official said after recently visiting Albania with a group of German businessmen.
“We are looking to emerge from the status of a donor country and find a cooperation partner at the same level in Albania,” Ernst Burgbacher, a Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology and Member of the Bundestag told Deutsche Welle in the local Albanian service.
“I think we will achieve the desired results. If we refer to trade exchanges they were at 110 million euros in 2010 and at 192 million euros for the first half of 2013,” he said.
Asked about the business climate in Albania, he referred to a study conducted by the German-Albanian Chamber of Commerce showing that German entrepreneurs who have already invested in Albania said they would invest again in Albania if they were given the opportunity.
The biggest German investments in Albania can be found in the Tirana International Airport, the Durres Port, the Tirana Business Park, and the expected TAP pipeline. Germany is also a donor in water supply and sewerage companies, waste management and energy.
The German official also stressed the importance of regional cooperation. “The Albanian market is small and foreign investors including German ones are looking for a bigger market space. That is why regional cooperation has concrete and very important impacts in this context,” said Burgbacher.
The German delegation headed by Burgbacher also visited the Durres Port where a German company has won a concession contract. Germany’s EMS Shipping & Trading GmbH has recently officially launched operations in the East Terminal of the Port of Durres, the country’s biggest, under a 35-year concession contract with the Albanian government. The terminal will be run by EMS Albanian Port Operator, full daughter of the German logistics company EMS Shipping & Trading GmbH.
Albanian-German cooperation
Since the early 1990s when the country’s communist regime collapsed and relations between the Germany and Albania were reestablished, the Federal Republic’s financial assistance and German private investments have been on the rise. The German development cooperation with Albania was launched in 1988, just before the collapse of the communist regime. Since then, the German federal government has made available around 1 billion euros for financial cooperation projects throughout the country. The focus is on improving municipal infrastructure and energy supply and strengthening the financial sector.
German companies are present in several key sectors in Albania.
The Tirana International Airport, run by the Hochtief Airport GmbH, the chief partner in a consortium that rehabilitated and now operates the country’s only international airport at Rinas, is Germany’s biggest investment in Albania. Canada’s PPS Investments has recently taken over Hochtief’s stakes in five countries, including a 47 percent stake in Albania’s Tirana International Airport (TIA). A German-Albanian consortium, the Albanian Stevedoring Company (ASC), currently handles the cargo in the country’s biggest port of Durres using modern technology. The KfW Development Bank is also engaged in the funding of big infrastructural projects, mainly water supply and sewerage ones, as well as energy, financing regional interconnection lines linking Albania to Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo.
German-owned ProCredit bank also plays an important role, offering loans to SMEs and most recently to renewable energy projects.
German companies in Albania are also actively engaged in other important sectors such as construction, production and retail sales. Tirana Business Park, a Euro 100 million investment led by Germany’s Lindner Group, is being built outside Tirana.
Rofix, which produces construction materials and Profarma pharmaceutical company which has been acquired by a German consortium, are some other successful German-run companies in Albania.
Germany’s was the sixth top destination of Albanian exports in 2012 and the fourth main partner for imports. Bank of Albania data show Albania imported Euro 228 million of goods of from Germany in 2012 and exported Euro 48 million, mainly garment and medicinal plants.
The German-Albanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Albania, DIHA, which represents the interests of German companies in Albania and promotes German-Albanian economic cooperation, says a majority 87 percent of companies which invested in Albania said they would invest again in the country.
