TIRANA, June 10 – Remittances from top trade partner Italy, the host of around 500,000 Albanian migrants have only been moderately affected during the past six crisis years, a study by Italy’s Foundation for Initiatives and Studies on Multi-Ethnicity, ISMU, has found.
Remittances sent from Albanian migrants in Italy dropped to around €127 million in 2014, down from €121 million in 2013 and a record high of €143 million in 2007 and 2008 just before the onset of the global financial crisis. By contrast, remittances from neighboring Greece, the host of around 500,000 migrants, are estimated to have suffered a sharper decline due to the neighboring country’s severe six-year recession.
The amount of remittances sent from Italy could be far bigger as the ISMU study takes into account only official transfer channels.
Remittances from Italy in the past six crisis years reached their lowest level in 2012 when they hit a record low of €115.7 million as the Italian economy contracted by 2.8 percent.
The study shows Albanian are the second largest foreign community in Italy with around 496,000 residents in 2014, sandwiched between Romania with more than 1 million and Morocco 455,000.
However, remittances per capita sent by Albanian migrants were at only 256 euros in 2014, the smallest amount among other foreign communities resident in Italy estimated at around 5 million people and with a per capita remittance of 1,084 euros annually.
Neighboring Italy has been one of the hardest hit Eurozone countries in the past six crisis years registering recession in 2008-2009 and 2012-2014. In its latest World Economic outlook, the IMF expects Italy to escape its three-recession with modest growth rate of 0.5 percent in 2015 and 1.1 percent in 2016.
One out of 16 Albanians residing in Italy has started their own business, mainly as self-employed in the construction industry, Albanian media based in Italy report citing Italy’s Unioncamere chamber of commerce.
Data shows some 30,700 companies, mainly small businesses, in Italy were owned by Albanians at the end of 2014 when some 502,000 Albanians were reported holding a residence permit in the neighboring Adriatic country, making it the key host of Albanian migrants since the early 1990s, soon after the first exodus following the collapse of the communist regime.
Albanians, who mainly run businesses in construction, ranked third in the number of businesses operated by non-EU citizens at the end of 2014.
Massive migration to Italy started in the early 1990s just as the country’s 45-year communist regime which had isolated Albania from the rest of the world collapsed.
