TIRANA, Feb. 10 – The unfavourable business climate is one of the main obstacles domestic and foreign companies face in doing business in Albania, Tahseen Sayed, the World Bank country manager for Albania has noted in a recent conference.
“The improvement of the business climate must be the focus of government’s work because this is directly related to the economic growth,” Sayed said as quoted by VoA in the local Albanian service.
The World Bank is assisting Albania improve its business climate and its road and energy infrastructure to speed growth.
“This is a country with huge economic potential and the World Bank is doing its best so that Albania benefits as much as possible from its favourable geographical position and other resources,” added Sayed.
According to her, Albania’s main challenges include the reorganization of public sectors with a high risk, the recovery of exports and the improvement of economic laws, privatizations, energy, transport, telecommunication, health and transparency in public procurements.
The World Bank expects the Albanian economy to accelerate to 3 percent in 2015, up from 2 percent in 2014.
“We expect Albania to grow by approximately 3 percent in 2015 if this positive trend continues and growth is bolstered by large foreign investment projects related to the Transadriatic pipeline and the energy sector,” Sayed has previously said.
“In order to increase the economic gains from the government’s fiscal policy stance, it will be important that fiscal consolidation is “smart” so inefficient public spending is eliminated, public investments support the country’s priorities and fiscal policy is supported by far-reaching reforms in support of improvements of the business climate,” she says.
Albania achieved its best ever result in the Doing Business report, ranking 68th among 189 global economies, considerably improving its image among foreign investors who consider the flagship report as a reference point before deciding to invest. The 2015 Doing Business report released by the World Bank ranked Albania 68th, up from 108th a year ago on business regulatory reforms and a change in methodology which saw Albania’s ranking in 2014 deteriorate from 90th to 108th.
However, Albania still has to improve its competitiveness in the Balkan region as it currently ranks better only compared to Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In the 2015 Doing Business, Albania improved in three areas of business regulatory reform including starting a business, dealing with construction permits, and registering property. “Starting a business has become easier in Albania by lowering registration fees. Albania also made dealing with construction permits easier by resuming the issuance of construction permits and by consolidating the land permit and construction permit into a single construction development permit. In addition, Albania made transferring property easier by establishing effective time limits and computerizing the records on immovable property,” says the report.
