The nationwide dialogue tour of the Prime Minister Edi Rama in the municipalities across the country went on Wednesday with a meeting with local farmers in the municipality of Berat to discuss development perspectives of agriculture. The next year’s state budget funding for the agriculture sector is the highest ever earmarked for the agricultural and rural development, embodying a great effort on the right path towards increasing competitiveness, continuous development of production systems and growing exports in line with the ambitious targets for Albania’s agricultural and agro-food exports to amount to over one billion euros by 2030.
* * *
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you very much for being patient, since for objective real reasons I couldn’t make it on time and I feel very embarrassed whenever it happens. However, I am very happy that I could see firsthand, although partially, this very significant investment and I am convinced that this is an investment to the best benefit of this family from generation to generation.
When we launched this process and when we embarked on our effort to promote agritourism, as Albania actually lacked an agritourism sector, except for some sporadic initiatives launched by a few number of visionary people, but with limited opportunities. Therefore no agrotourism system existed. This is a nascent system, still in its embryonic stage, even though agritourism businesses are already operational throughout the territory, but the development potential of this system and the economic and financial potential of agrotourism need still to be developed.
We have unlocked just the minimum of the whole minimum of this potential, but most importantly we already have concrete examples of how one owning an inherited family property, a private family home, farmland or who leases land in a rural area, he or she builds a new guesthouse or agritourism facility and builds a much more profitable business enterprise instead of working for others abroad. And it is a fact that people who have returned back home from emigration have been involved in such an activity and have invested their savings in agritourism businesses and this fact helps us to convey this message to everyone else. Albania is home to many areas where mass agricultural development is impossible. But the country boasts a large number of destinations, no matter how remote, home to enchanting natural wonders and these spots are just like honey drops for everyone to gather around through the agritourism businesses, because it doesn’t take modern road infrastructure, such businesses don’t need logistics to take their locally grown produce to bigger urban markets. They need nothing, but just an open door and a reality, where the hospitality tradition and local delicacies combined with stunning landscape and commitment of local people, who keep their guesthouses doors open, to attract an ever growing number of visitors. I have already highlighted in other meetings too and I am reiterating it here, namely the case of a Swedes who have made an extremely wise investment at the peak of the mountain in the area of Nivice, without scratching the earth at all, without using a single drop of concrete, but just light construction materials that one can secure and collect overnight. A destination, an eco resort, with expensive prices for the sake of truth, nestled amid an incredibly stunning beauty of nature. And it is mainly visitors from Sweden and Norway who book and pay significantly a lot to visit the area.
In the meantime, I think time is high for everyone, primarily the mayors with whom we have been talking and discussing a lot about this aspect during this period, to best consider the need to take to a whole new level the cooperation of farmers with one another and the local government authorities with farmers.
You remember quite well that, when we embarked on this effort, the collection and storage centres in all this area, as well as in Lushnje and Fier, could be counted on the fingers of one hand only.
I am returning to the path we have followed and I am referring to the examples that have been fortunately already set in Albania. It actually took some time, because of the phobia about the agricultural cooperatives, the phobia about collective work and scandalous political mad rhetoric. It is true that the number of beehives and the bee keeping farms has increased, production has increased, yet the processing and packaging industry is yet to develop and create Albanian honey brands from various parts of the country and one can’t go too far when everyone just exploits his own beehives and collects the honey on his own.
To this end, we need to create synergies, with the local and central governments being involved and committed to provide incentives and facilities by contributing either institutionally, bureaucratically or financially. This means that it won’t be necessary for all the beekeepers but for some of them at least to come together and work with local government authorities to develop policies, create an association, enterprise, a company or a cooperative, you name it.
Finally, I would like to highlight the aspect of a situation, unfortunately the third consecutive disaster, which has nothing to do with what we have wished for and we can do nothing to end it. From the devastating earthquake to the pandemic to the third and definitely the worst one, because it has been designed and arranged to actually be the worst one. Whoever claims that no war is going on, he is either totally blind or totally mad or does intentionally claim so. I won’t go over details about this issue, as you already know my position on this.
What I would like to point out is that this war has been designed to bring Russia’s Western flank to its knees. How? By tossing bombs and missiles on Ukraine, by inflicting physical destructions in Ukraine. This is to challenge the international right order in Ukraine. However, there are two weapons one can’t escape at all and these weapons intentionally produced to hit every house and household all over the world in the West of Russia, from Poland to Iceland and beyond, and we are talking about our continent. The first weapon is the blow from the energy price that definitely affects everyone, wherever the lights are switched on, and the second weapon is the inflation, the invisible hand that grips you anytime you put the hand in your pockets to pay or buy something. This is the war-driven inflation that requires its share on everything we buy and consume.
We have succeeded in neutralizing the first weapon to date. The electricity bills sent to your home addresses haven’t changed. If you read your bills, no war is going on. Why? This is because every household and every small business in Albania are protected by a shield that the government has placed before the war was to start, right after the energy crisis, which was indeed the prelude of what ensued and the situation provoked by Putin in the Kremlin.
That financial protection shield helps to make sure that every household pays only 20, 25 or even sometimes 30% of the real electricity price, and what the government pays through the state budget, which is not reflected on your electricity bills, is estimated at 70%, 75%, and 80% of the electricity bill. But such a move would have been insufficient if we were to limit the government measure to help the households only and we were to decline from expanding and including the small business, because every shop, if higher electricity rates were to be imposed, would transfer a good part of the increased price to the consumers and this is the reason why Albania’s inflation rate is the region’s lowest and this is a fact.
Of course, this is not a reason for us to say that there is no cause for you to feel frustrated. No, there could be many reasons, because the difficulties are many. However, it is for sure that we are doing not just the best, but we are making a tremendous effort to do the best. And I am really confident that if we manage to maintain this protection shield in place in the coming months, this would be a great economic accomplishment for the country.
Thank you very much!
