Konfindustria needs urgent measures to sidestep global crisis

TIRANA, March 2 – Konfindustria business association called on the government and the Central Bank of Albania to take the extraordinary measures in order to stop the hard currency from leaving the country.
The majority of Albanian commercial banks are branches of home offices located primarily in Greece, Italy, Turkey and Bulgaria. Konfindustria warned the Bank of Albania (BoA) authorities to stop the flow of liquidity to their headquarters that may be trying hard to cope with bad loans worldwide.
The BoA has said that all banks operating in the country have no problems with their liquidity. It has also become known that steps to prevent banks from transferring their liquidity, or their reserves to their home offices have been undertaken.
Konfindustria asked the Central Bank to set strict rules on moving liquidity abroad.
It also urged authorities to stop illegal flow of capital.
Authorities say the country has not been negatively affected from the global crisis.
But last week the BoA Governor Adrian Fullani said that the country would definitely feel such negative effects in the second part of the crisis, meaning the fall of remittances and direct foreign investment in the country.
Locally it was also learnt that the banks have recently offered fewer loans, or 0.5 percent more in December compared to a year ago, a significant fall from the normal rise of double-digit loan growth in a country where the businesses usually ask for more crediting.