Fourth call for the European Union-funded projects through the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance in Rural Development (IPARD II) Programme, mostly focusing on nature and rural tourism, handcrafts and manufacturing industry, was launched today for everyone wishing to invest in these aspects of rural tourism in Albania.
The fourth call for applications will be open until February 25th, 2022 and the call is designed to promote and open a window of communication for all potential applicants to attract as many as possible investment projects in the country’s rural tourism. The overall available budget for this call is Euro5.2 million, with the EU funds accounting for 75% of the total budget and 25% of it provided by the Albanian government through its state budget.
From an IPARD beneficiary in Tirana, Prime Minister Edi Rama, together with the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Frida Krifca, and the EU Ambassador to Albania Luigi Soreca, officially launched the 4th IPARD Call with focus on natural and rural tourism and handicrafts manufacturing. In his remarks, PM Rama noted that the programme provides for an immensely favourable funding to anyone with the vision and the readiness to develop their household economy, relying on the incredible yet little tapped potential of the rural areas and agro-tourism in particular.
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It appeared to me rational to join the Agriculture Minister, the EU Ambassador and the President of the National Chamber of Crafts and together launch today this new phase of the European Union-funded assistance programme for rural development and rural tourism in particular through the fourth launch of a programme that provides for an immensely favourable funding to anyone with the vision and the readiness to develop their household economy, relying on the incredible yet little tapped potential of the rural areas and agro-tourism in particular.
I believe we have done significant progress after having commenced this task in a completely barren ground by gradually clearing the way to investment projects in agro-tourism, being fully confident of Albania’s incredible potential in this aspect and that agro-tourism is the right solution for many rural households living in remote countryside area with little or no access to larger markets and lacking the financial means, favourable geographical and climatic position to engage in intensive agriculture or farming.
Agro-tourism is the answer viewing the path to development from the opposite and it is precisely because of such a geographical location and for a range of objective reasons it is not possible for you to engage in intensive farming, all the disadvantages in terms of agricultural development are actually your advantages to engage in another kind of development. It is the advantage you have been granted with thanks to the nature, the advantage you are granted with because of the distance, and definitely the advantage of what you offer, making sure that the market accesses you instead of you seeking to access the market, making consumers to come to you instead of you seeking to take your locally grown produce to consumers in a larger market.
The already amassed experiences in this area, now significant ones compared to where we all started from, speak for themselves for the great advantage agro-tourism provides to all of them involved in this business.
On the other hand, it is very easy today for everyone to verify all the words and the theoretical premises by closely seeing for themselves the changes that have already taken place in various parts of the country, where local residents and families wouldn’t otherwise be able to build a sustainable household economy and would have been forced to leave. But they have actually built a much stronger economy and earn a lot more than they would have been able to earn by abandoning their birthplace to settle in Tirana or abroad in Germany or elsewhere.
Agro-tourism represents an extraordinary opportunity for the emigrants, who wish to invest their savings, as such investment projects would secure them much higher earnings and income than they would be able to earn through hard work abroad. This has been already proven and all the agro-tourism projects already operational on the map of Albania’s rural tourism today speak for themselves.
Investments in agro-tourism definitely need a certain basis. This is the reason why the European Union sees agro-tourism as one of the elements included in its funding programmes, and this is the reason why agro-tourism is also one of the elements included in the Albanian government’s funding programmes and this is the reason why we have joined forces with the European Union in this effort, with the EU providing the largest part of the required funding and the government covering one fourth of the funding to support all the eligible investment projects.
The success stories either in agro-tourism as well as in the overall rural development speak for an indisputable fact. Rural development requires know-how, rural development requires innovation, rural development also requires efforts to make up for the lost time. If we are to look at the panorama of rural development, we would still see two parallel realities, with the reality of successful projects on one hand, precisely because they precede the obstacles naturally being there as time changes.
In the meantime, we also see the panorama of those who fail to really succeed as they increasingly face obstacles as they try to survive failing to meet the challenges of our time. On the one hand we see the ones producing, collecting, exporting and creating new jobs and significant income, and on the other hand we see others whose produce and crops are not harvested and, even worse, they are forced to throw away their produce.
The ones in the initial group address the state assistance mechanisms, with a significant part of it, I repeat, provided by the European Union, as they have already realized that constant change and adaptation to changes and to an ever sophisticated and more open market is actually the key to the success. Meanwhile the second group resorts to the blockade, demanding from the government what the government can’t do in the system we have chosen to live in.
We invite the ones in the first group to apply for assistance, which keeps ever increasing in financial terms, and if you are to take a look at the financial sources made available to agriculture and rural development today, also thanks to the fact that the Agriculture and Rural Development Agency (ARDA) totally changed and became a support generator over the past few years, as it best adapted to the EU programmes, are actually comparable to the recent past, as more and more sources of funding are being made available.
While we invite the latter to learn from the first group and adapt. It is impossible for one to survive today in an increasingly open, more demanding and more sophisticated market if you limit yourself to your small patch of agricultural land. It is impossible for one to survive today by resorting to a small quantity of production, for which you require buyers to be able to sell at a reasonable price. It is simply impossible.
Meanwhile our approach is very clear. Agriculture and rural development as a whole should be increasingly oriented towards entrepreneurship and all those who are engaged in this area, definitely have the opportunity to build a successful enterprise, if they learn from those who are successful and if they anticipate obstacles that time raises steadily for those who lag behind.
Of course, we still have a lot to do to guarantee maximum quality of agricultural inputs, because it is unjustifiable and unforgivable for us as a country not to guarantee the highest quality of agricultural inputs, seeds, seedlings, of all those elements, which actually form the basis. We have a lot to do to guarantee an increase of roads, an expansion of information routes for farmers, for people who are in the rural development sector, to definitely increase capacities, stimulating knowhow and stimulating close knowledge of cases of success and of course also to massively stimulate innovation and the ubiquitous introduction of new technologies in this sector.
To conclude, I strongly believe that examples of rural development through agro-tourism are already significant enough to stimulate a much larger movement towards this sector. They are quite significant in encouraging more and more people to invest in this sector. I carefully listened to the remarks by the head of this household, who gave us the opportunity to come together for this event, who despite the emotions said a word which I fully share with her and believe as much as she believes, that one day will come when agro-tourism and rural tourism in Albania will surely be equivalent, if not more important than mass coastal tourism.
The day will come when the beauties of Albania and all the endless destinations in remote Albania, will soon become very popular and year-round tourist destinations. The day will come when the agro-tourism offer in Albania will be such that it will increase the demand and the income of those investing in this sector will definitely increase considerably and with all the support in the fiscal aspect that we give to agro-tourism and with all the relief that the agro-tourism enterprises are granted from the state today, it is a pity to have a land in a beautiful point of Albanian nature, either in the villages around Tirana, or in the mountains , whether in the hills near Durrës or Shkodra or Saranda and not be exploited to develop your household economy by contributing to the mainstream national economy.
I want to congratulate and encourage all of you here, who are already involved in this sector, I know some of you, we have especially encouraged some of you, but I am convinced that by putting together what you show and what you do not show, because it is known, it is in the nature of every Albanian entrepreneur big or small not to tell everything, you know more better than us who say that the work is going well for you and even better for you because the better your work goes, the better our work goes.
Thank you very much!
