PM announces taxes for high fees in mobile phone, banking sectors

TIRANA, Jan. 12 – Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha has said his government will move this year to raise taxes for mobile phone companies and banks charging unjustifiable high fees and tariffs on Albanian consumers.
On Wednesday’s government meeting Prime Minister Berisha called on Finance Minister Ridvan Bode to review the profit tax for mobile phone companies to prevent tariffs abuses.
“The profit tax for each sms will be 7 to 8 times higher than currently,” said Berisha, adding that phone calls would also undergo higher taxes.
Earlier on Tuesday, comparing the companies to oligarchies, Berisha announced a policy of zero tolerance against them for offloading onto the Albanian customers fees and tariffs that were “too high and unjustifiable,” and threatened to impose taxes on them.
“In a friendly way, I voiced a serious concern of my government towards two or three sectors that charge very high and unjustified fees for their services to the Albanian citizens,” Berisha said at a joint news conference with the World Bank’s Managing Director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
“Of course, this is not nice news, but I would like to inform public opinion that the government will move to change the fiscal system towards these sectors in a proportionate and powerful manner,” Berisha added.
Arguing that he had expected companies to lower fees after Albania cut profit and personal income tax as well as social security contributions, Berisha said his government would not accept the fact that Albanians pay tariffs that were disproportionate vis-a-vis the market and reality in neighboring markets.
His main target was mobile phone companies that charge Albanians fees twice or thrice higher than in the other countries of the Balkan region, although the country’s usage of mobile phones was 17 percent higher than the European average.
The four mobile phone operators, which are AMC, owned by Deutsche Telekom and Greece’s OTE, Vodafone Albania, Turkish-owned Eagle and Albanian-owned Plus, have more than 4.16 million subscribers in total.
Banks charging high prices for electronic transactions were also the subject of Berisha’s anger.
“We cannot accept that electronic transactions are free of charge all over Europe while here they have a high price. This happens at a time when for the sake of developing this market we almost force the citizens to use electronic transactions,” Berisha said.
“The duty of the government is to move using the system that makes possible a more honest and just distribution of income,” Berisha stressed. “This government will adopt a policy of zero tolerance towards oligarchs and oligarchy.”