TIRANA, Dec. 23 – Living with a fiscal burden of 15 percent is just a one-hour flight from Italy. That’s how a headline published in Italy’s daily Il Giornale described Albania this week comparing it to Italy which applies a 31.4 percent corporate income rate.
The Italian daily describes Albania as an attractive destination where some 20,000 Italians have already invested.
“It’s a fact,” wrote Prime Minister Rama on his Facebook profile posting a picture of daily Il Giornale.
Apart from businesspeople, students, professors, journalists and architects are living and working in Albania, which has become a promised land for new wave of Italian migrants.
In the early 1990s when the communist regime collapsed it was the Albanians who left the country in a mass exodus to Italy. Twenty years on, a wave of Italians is coming to Albania as Italy faces its worst recession since World War II.
“The country which twenty years ago sparked despair, is now hosting Italian immigrants. At the beginning there were entrepreneurs thirsty for low-cost labour force, but today there are also workers, craftsmen, electricians, plumbers, welders, mechanics, marble workers but even lawyers, doctors, architects and students,” said Italian daily La Repubblica in a recent article titled “Italians in Albania: We are the migrants now.”
The typical Albanians migrating to Italy are men aged between 25 to 50, mostly from northern Italy. There are around 1,000 Italian students mostly studying medicine at the “Zoja e Keshillit te Mire” University which has a twinning deal with the University of Rome Tor Vergata.
Italians also dominate the call centre business in Albania, which has become the main employer of Albania youth, most of whom speak fluent Italian.
Italian entrepreneurs in Albania date from the early 1990s when the communist regime collapsed to recent arrivals. Cristina Busi, the owner of Coca Cola Albania, has been doing business in Albania since 1991. Francesco Becchetti, the owner of new Agon Channel TV, is one of the latest Italian entrepreneurs in Albania.
Italian companies dominate the list of foreign companies operating in Albania, according to data published by the country’s Institute of Statistics on the foreign companies and the joint ventures in Albania. Data show Italy, which is Albania’s top trade partner, had 1,460 enterprises operating in Albania at the end of 2012, accounting for 38 percent of total foreign enterprises or joint ventures in Albania.
Government officials say Albania offers investment opportunities not only because of the flexibility of its labour market and one of the world’s lowest fiscal regimes, but also because of the tangible assistance to domestic and foreign investors.
Italy is Albania’s top trade partner with 50 percent of total exports and 30 percent of imports. More than 80 percent of footwear and garment products manufactured in Albania, which are the country’s main exports, go to Italy. According to Italy’s Confindustria lobby group, some 300 Italian companies operate in Albania, mainly in the footwear and garment manufacturing.
Data published by Italian Institute of Statistics ISTAT show Albanians are the second largest non-EU group in Italy after the Moroccans with around half a million migrants.
