Prime Minister Edi Rama addressed the audience in a session held at the Centre for International Development at Harvard University, focusing on the vision the Albanian Government has on the economic model and economic and social renaissance of the country.
These two decades, the Prime Minister said, since Albania came out of isolation, have been years during which the country has been floating on a sea of networks and opportunities, without being able to anchor in sustainable results. This is why knowledge and innovation have been the watchword of the governing program of the “Alliance for European Albania”.
“We are certain that we don’t want economic development at the expenses of democracy and we will never work for economic development at the expenses of freedom.
Democracy cannot stand alone without economic development, while economic development is possible without democracy. But this is not our choice and will never be. And, especially from this point of view, we are inspired by the example of those countries where freedom is in power and where economic development comes as a consequence of freedom and democracy,” Prime Minister Rama said.
Speaking of the developments occurred in the first year of his government, Prime Minister Rama focused on the adoption and implementation of the successful package for toll manufacturing.
“Recently, our government has endorsed an incentive package for toll manufacturing that includes renting state facilities for 1 euro a year for several years; providing vocational training for employees and support with social security expenditures and other incentives. This package implemented since January 2014 and shaped in close collaboration with actors within the sector and through a relationship of partnership with the business world, is proving successful. Exports related to toll manufacturing increased with 26.08% for the period January-August 2914, compared to the same period one year before.”
In order to achieve sustainable results, the Prime Minister noted that the Government is focused in creating structures that ensure know-how based continuity and success.
In order to make these results sustainable we are creating structures that ensure its continuity and success.
“We are currently working towards recreating a Public Private Partnership Unit in the Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Entrepreneurship. The unit will put all its efforts into making sure that we materialize new projects for foreign investors; projects which will be viable from a business standpoint, and which will ensure that we create dynamic enterprises for tomorrow, not just an immediate profit for today. So during our first year in government we have seen that through using networks of knowledge within a result-oriented and innovation focused mind-set, transformation is quite possible.”
Albania, the Prime Minister said, needs a new economic model which does not revolve around immigration remittances or the construction industry as its main source, but one that considers the country’s location at the very heart of Europe, its natural resources, and the fact of having the second youngest population in Europe, as well as its necessity for knowledge and innovation, especially in the 5 key areas: energy, finance, public policy, urbanization and economy.
While stressing that Albania, with the cooperation of the World Bank, has just overcome an internal debt crisis, the Prime Minister noted that he saw recovery and economic development as binominal with democratic development, since there can be no robust economy without a strong democratic society.
“Now it is time to reform the financial system and ensure transparency and predictability;
We have started from tax services and customs and in the latter case, cooperation with the British company Crown Agents has been yielding excellent results in fighting corruption and in ensuring a sustainable modernization of the customs system, sensitively increasing incomes” – the Prime Minister said.
