*Prime Minister Edi Rama’s remarks at Tirana Economic Forum:

Thank you very much for the kind invitation and for giving me the opportunity to address this Forum on a very good day in the Albanian history actually, because 100 years ago today on 30 January 1920, Lushnja Congress took place, which represent a very important event in our path towards building our state and not only that, but a state that always has its eyes on the West when it comes to development and cooperation.

I would like to wholeheartedly thank Mr. Tsomokos and all those who cordially have come together in running this Forum that two years ago, if I recall it correctly, was addressed by the Ambassador of the European Union, who has joined us again today. In his remarks, the Ambassador mentioned the very turbulent times the world was going through, and it is actually still going through and this is the case in many countries, and, of course, with the European Union as a very important focal point of reference for us here in Albania.

And I very much hope that this year will be a good year both for the EU and Albania, as I truly very much hope this year is also a very good one for the region, our neighbors and the relations with all our neighbors. I believe that this can increasingly provide foundation for development of our economy and for improving our citizens’ lives.

But, first of all, let me express a wish taking advantage of Mr. Tsomokos presence here and given that he pointed out the prestigious Delphi Economic Forum, one of the major addresses in our entire continental map when it comes to a space with economy being right at the center of meetings and talks and where people come together to put forward and generate ideas, establish links and discuss future cooperation. This Forum here in Tirana has been actually modelled a bit like the Delphi Forum, but my idea today is to strengthen this cooperation with the Delphi Forum and make most of its expertise, know-how and experience and further expand Tirana Forum. In the meantime, we need to figure out how these two forum can interact and probably take further steps for the smaller Tirana Forum to serve as a platform for further elaboration of topics or issues that may arise at the Delphi Forum and that can develop further during the same year. This is just an idea I hope will be taken into account and of course if we succeed in doing this, then we can put the Tirana Forum on the map and push for creation of a forum with a profile that somehow becomes a destination for public servants and private stakeholders wishing to come together and discuss certain issues and topics.

Since you have invited me to speak about the economy and since I know quite well that when it comes to economy there are always some tricks, because people do not eat statistics and they do not drink figures, while rightly are unwilling to be compared to where they stood yesterday, but they always want to be compared to where they wish to be tomorrow and this is no easy task. I can tell you that the speech my team has prepared actually contains a lot of data and figures and I am not going to take the risk of going over all these figures, since it would look like I am opening another space, while saying that every figure shows improvements. We have the lowest unemployment rate in 25 years, not based on what I am saying, but on what the World Bank report cites as a success story.

And I know that people who are watching this event through the media might well say, “yes, this has happened because the country’s population is down since many people might have left the country.” But no, this is not the case. This because the unemployment figure and the unemployment rate is not estimated taking into consideration the number of people currently living in Albania, but according to the number of the country’s whole population. So, if we were to consider the number of people currently living in Albania only, then the unemployment rate would turn out to be much lower.

Another significant figure concerns foreign investments. There is a lot of talks going on this issue currently and of course the country needs a lot more foreign investments, yet the data shows a progress and a growth in foreign investment… However, let’s not talk on the accomplishments alone and instead focus on the challenges, since I believe this is much more important and interesting. Let me stress that I well aware that we need to improve business climate. This is very important and we definitely need to improve the conduct and capacity of our administration in all cases. We also specifically need to improve that part of the administration that is directly tasked with dealing with issues concerning business activities.

I am truly optimistic that significant tangible results will be achieved this year. On one hand, going further with the digitalization of the public service delivery to the citizens and the business, practically making the communication between the citizens and the entrepreneurship with the public administration by totally eliminating the direct physical contact and turning whole public service delivery into web and digitally-based system. So, our plan is to make sure that around 95 percent of the public services are delivered digitally within 2020. So, people dealing with business will no longer need to report to various offices in order to apply for licenses, permits, or other required services. This is the first phase.

The next stage will provide for everything to be transferred over the Internet and every kind of licenses, certificates and documentation will be provided on a totally web-based system. This will completely change the nature of communication between the people and the public administration.

There is something else I would like to point out as this is very important. Through a Council of Ministers’ decision we will ultimately provide that all applications – and we are talking about millions of applications annually, from the simplest applications to obtain a certificate to much more ones to obtain a license – should be processed and provide a response within legal deadlines and whoever violates these deadlines will face fines. Specialists, the director of the institution and sector head will face fines for failing to meet legal deadlines. They will pay from their own money for each delay caused to any enterprises or individuals who apply for a certain document.

The second step, which will change a lot the communication between business with customers and the communication between the state and the business, will be the so-called fiscalization program, whose implementation will start soon and which will yield initial results this year, so that every internet-based transaction is transparent to the eyes of both the administration and the entrepreneurship. We are still far from achieving this, because our system, first and foremost, lacks transparency over business to business transactions and a single report over the transactions from business and the transactions between the business and customers is produced in 24 hours. This means this activity is, so to say, quite shadowy. With the fiscalization program we will be able to track every second of transactions conducted over the internet and the entire activity go through a kind of a digital brain, which will be constantly monitored by the fiscal administration. This will ensure a fantastic transparency level, as well as it will prevent a major part of wrongdoings by the tax administration.

The second step includes the tracking and tracing system, which we plan to start implement starting with the excise goods. Drinking water and medicines, first and foremost, which means that every product entering the market will be tracked by the system. Every drop of fuel supplied by the fuel distribution network and is purchased by citizens will be tracked. Every drug tablet or any product sold in a supermarket or store will be tracked.

Could you imagine the changes such a system will bring about and how much revenues will be collected in the framework of this structure. These are good news and I am really happy, because we are now ready to reap the benefits of our work following long years of efforts and hard work to lay the foundations of our digital systems of the future.

Such thing will dramatically change the situation in terms of fighting corruption, bribery and every other directly and indirectly related aspect. What we plan to do in the coming days, once we wrap up the internal discussions with our European, American partners and experts, is that we will clearly distinguish between the legitimate businesses and the criminal businesses. This means we will work and do the utmost to make sure that the legitimate businesses are best treated and a better working environment is created, so that they develop more capacities to project their future without facing unpredictable events, both from the public administration or problematic factors and we know that one of the problematic factors could be organized crime and extortion. So, we will discuss and reach an agreement on an extremely powerful attack against the organized crime, asking every organized crime convict or suspect to date to demonstrate that his or her wealth or assets are proceeds from legitimate businesses or otherwise their assets will be confiscated.

We are seeking to convey a strong message to both, the legitimate and unlawful businesses. To the legitimate business we want to send the message that a lot remains to be done in order to improve doing business and we want the legitimate business to strongly trust in this country and believe that every day will be a much better day than the yesterday to do business in Albania, whereas we want to simply tell illegal business operators this is not their country and that they will find it hard to survive in this country.

Time is high to seriously crack down on them and make sure that all these wrongdoings and mischief they have made by penetrating and infiltrating the society, business community, the public administration and politics are put to an end. That time is over.

The fifth thing I would like to share with you today is regional cooperation. I’d really like to have a further discussion with Mr. Tsomokos and all those involved in organizing this forum, together with the ambassadors, Forum sponsors and all stakeholders, to explore ways how we can focus Tirana Economic Forum on issues of regional cooperation and improvement of our region’s economy. I am saying this because for years this has been the fundamental principle of Vienna Economic Forum and it has helped to bring leader of the region together at a time when things have changed tremendously thanks to the Berlin Process initiated by the German Chancellor in 2014, opening up a whole new path for the region, bringing together leadership to talk about the region’s future.

It is time to take another step forward and move from good intentions, good wishes and noble ideas to more concrete discussions and steps, because regardless of whatever people might say and regardless of any kind of contradiction may arise, the truth is that we represent a small market if we are not interconnected. Even Greece, which is a bigger country with many early interconnections, Greece itself is small market and the country wouldn’t have arrived to where it is today should it was isolated, just like our economies are in terms of the impact they have on the region and the benefits they can reap from the region.

So, we can do relatively a lot more in this regard, both with Greece, a EU member country which has already built a considerable experience and has demonstrated through numerous examples how we can develop economically, as well as with other states that are seeking to become part of the European family one day.

Allow me to conclude my speech by saying again, and I hope my speech has made it clear that my thanks were not formal, not based on certain circumstances, but it was heartfelt. And I’m sure there is potential in this form that we should not be happy with what we have today, because it is very little, but we must be really, so to speak, intrigued by what we can benefit if we come together and join forces in the future.

I and the government I head would be very happy to be part of this pool of forces among us and I would wish to see all stakeholders coming together. I am absolutely very positive that the region will also be part of this effort in order to twin this Forum with the much larger Delphi Forum, which, as I said from the very beginning, may focus on ways to further develop and elaborate many topics and issues – though it may not sound that beautiful to the global actors – by taking a profile through which we can claim to have a little bit more saying on certain issues.

Thank you once again and I apologize that I have to leave and attend the Parliament’s session, which might not be as nice as this place here, yet it is part of my official life and we cannot afford choosing what we want. We should, as you know, to obey the routine with nice things and less nice things.

Thank you!

 

*Simultaneous interpretation