The House of Business is the newest structure designed to further strengthen the institutionalized dialogue between the government and business community in Albania. Housed in the iconic Pyramid building in Tirana, near the Prime Minister’s office, the House of Business opened its doors to welcome entrepreneurs and business community representatives to tackle their problems. The centre has been also devised to serve as a weekly meeting point for the technical secretariats of the National Economic Council that will be founded as part of the ongoing work in the coming weeks.
“Meetings will take place, while a team of individuals will serve here tasked with taking notes and collecting issues concerning each and every one of you and tackle them through the state structures. You should see this house as your own house, where opinions are exchanged and shared in an informal, simple and non-bureaucratic way and this house will be the address for you to solve the problems you encounter with the state institutions,” the Minister of State and Entrepreneurship and Business Climate, Delina Ibrahimaj, told participants during visit to the newly-built space, a day after the National Economic Council resumed its work.
In his remarks, Prime Minister Edi Rama said that the new structure will serve as a bridge of direct interaction between the government and the business community.
“Building such a new bridge and opening such a door of direct interaction with the government is the best and simplest way to address various issues and any problem that business community faces when encounters irritating and distressing situations because of wrongful interpretation by the relevant public administration bodies or when coming across individuals or groups of individuals who take advantage of being in public office to obstruct and delay procedures in exchange for a bribe.”
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Thank you very much. I will speak while sitting down so that we make this conversation less formal and conduct it in a more familiar way.
For some times now, the cabinet includes a State Minister dedicated to entrepreneurship, yet for a long time now we also face concerns and the question why no more intense and stronger interaction takes place between the entrepreneurship and this institution, which has been actually launched and tasked with serving as the door of the advocate of entrepreneurship and the business community, with every entrepreneur supposed to knock on and report any problems you face. And you certainly face an array of problems, starting with the legislation regulation the sector you operate in, various issues you encounter when dealing with the institutions and during certain procedures, to the completely individual problems along a certain step in the process, the delays caused for your companies as an intervention that needs to be tackled, both in the case when such intervention is accompanied with an arbitrary interpretation of a process, as well as in the cases when such intervention triggers suspicion or conviction that is being employed for corruption purposes.
I have always believed and I believe that building such a door, which provided first-hand contact with the government, is the best, the simplest and the fastest way to address various issues and any problem that business community faces when encounters irritating and distressing situations because of wrongful interpretation by the relevant public administration bodies or when coming across individuals or groups of individuals who take advantage of being in public office to obstruct and delay procedures in exchange for a bribe.
A significant part of the bribery world has been already dismantled thanks to the digital interactions and a good part of the troubles facing entrepreneurship have been eradicated, as many interactions and required procedures that should be carried out the law stipulates or because of the work processes with the state, you complete them independently without having to contact anyone, but simply by accessing the e-Albania platform. However, a part of this old world of bribery is still alive and certainly incomprehensible to me for an entrepreneur, who bears a huge responsibility, not only for his or her family, but also for a certain number of employees and their families, to hesitate when it comes to coping with such situations in the best and most straightforward way by contacting the government directly, as the government has actually provided this opportunity to everyone, because it has a relevant cabinet member tasked with handling these issues. And this Business House – as Delina (State Minister for Entrepreneurship) has named it and I don’t want to earn any credits for this – so this space named as the House of Business was actually launched as part of our strong will to deliver on meeting this goal, but it is also driven by the very idea that one has to contact the relevant cabinet member in person, who works inside a government building, and then wait before you go through a series of other chains along the state structure, has been an impediment to everyone. To this end, we have created this space, where no procedures and no processes are applied for one to cross the threshold of the door very close to the Prime Minister’s office, where the office and the administration of the State Minister for Entrepreneurship is housed. This space will also house the members of the Secretariat of the National Economic Council, but who are also part of the staff of the Minister in the sense of interaction.
The National Economic Council Secretary is not part of the Minister’s staff in the practical sense. In other words is a direct link between the business community and the government ensured via the Secretary General, the Economic Council, the relevant Minister and the government.
I am convinced that you will all benefit from this, because you will no longer have to wait for weeks and months for an official reply.
The governments of Albania will make way for one another, but it is Albania, the whole Albanian public and private system, the ones that will remain always there and if there is a part of this system that should really take European integration very seriously for their need to survive and achieve success.
If there is a challenge of the challenges facing the Albanian system to become part of the European system thanks to Albania’s full accession is the resilience of the private sector and making this sector and your companies capable to resist so that they are not wiped off the map, because the small Albanian system, along with its problems, will access a much bigger system, where “a man is a wolf to another man” as the Latin proverb has it, in the sense that every company, amid the market economic reality, is a wolf in the hunt for the prey. If not, they are doomed.
The National Economic Council is more important than ever before, precisely to enable an interaction starting with the information.
However, thank you for coming and for providing us the opportunity to open this door today. It would be regrettable if this office remains unvisited and ineffective, and I am really confident that the cooperation between the government and the National Economic Council has granted us a new opportunity. It depends primarily on us how much we will turn this office into a number of fresh opportunities for your activities, but it will also largely depend on you and everyone else in your business community.
Thank you very much!
