Prime Minister Edi Rama attended the annual sixth International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) Constituency Meeting, being held for the first time today in Albania.
Prime Minister Rama considered the IMF&WB Constituency Meeting as a very fruitful exchange, noting that “these are not easy times and the meeting is taking place amid a situation when all countries in Europe have to cope with special challenges, but this is one more reason why we feel the importance of this meeting and why we believe that this exchange will be quite fruitful and will hopefully provide us food for thought about how to face the challenges and approach the near future, being fully aware of the risks and finding at the same time creative ways to cope.
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Thank you for coming!
It is undoubtedly a pleasure that this annual IMF and WB meeting takes place for the first time in Albania.
We are equally aware that this is happening amid tough times and in a situation when all countries in Europe have to cope with special challenges, but this is one more reason why we feel the importance of this meeting and why we believe that this exchange will be quite fruitful and will hopefully provide us food for thought about how to face the challenges and approach the near future, being fully aware of the risks and finding at the same time creative ways to cope.
I don’t want to take up too much of your time and tell you how successful our tourism sector is, where we are particularly seeing a strong growth.
The number of tourist arrivals has kept increasing and Albania’s international airport has recorded an upward trend, ranking it first in Europe for the strongest post-pandemic growth. In the meantime, the World Tourism Organization ranked Albania third in the world after Qatar and Saudi Arabia for tourism growth last year.
Ranking world’s third without hosting the world football championship, without being home to Mecca and without hundreds of billions in investments is quite an achievement and an incentive to move forward. We have received data on foreign arrivals in January and the data show that around half a million of tourists have visited the country.
Our international airport has overcome the region’s main airport, namely the Belgrade airport, performing much better last year. Given the promising data on foreign arrivals in January, we can only imagine how the next season will be compared to the last season, when around one million Italians came to the Albanian coast.
Similarly, we feel encouraged by the employment and unemployment data, although it is a challenge to further increase wages in a bid to rein in the increasingly fierce competition in the developed countries seeking to meet labor market shortages. The country’s entire financial system will certainly be up for further discussions during this meeting and I don’t want to go over details. However, I would like to note that the financial system is showing adaptability and strong resilience. The non-performing loan ratio to the GDP stood almost at 25% and this was the most difficult problem when we took office. The non-performing loans ratio stands at a trivial rate, while we are witnessing significant increase in bank lending, although we are not at all happy with this and want to see more, but nevertheless the basis is quite encouraging.
You might have been familiarized with the profound reform we have launched in the energy sector, which has been one of the most challenging issues for the country over decades and we have succeeded in building a stable situation without having been forced to increase the energy prices, even though like everyone else we face the challenge of the global energy crisis and especially the European energy price crisis.
Our goal is to transform Albania into a net energy exporter by 2030 and that’s why we are investing a lot in solar and wind power projects, although Albania is almost 100% dependent on hydropower plants and energy production is already 100% renewable. We want to keep things as they are and not fall prey to easy solutions and continue to expand and diversify the portfolio of the energy sector with all types of renewable energies.
I would like to conclude by saying something I really think is one of the one of the reasons for our success, namely the very close cooperation with the World Bank and especially the very constructive and productive dialogue we have established thanks to the World Bank’s mission in Albania.
Prior to taking office as Prime Minister, I had never thought I would ever say a good word about the World Bank, but everything turned out quite well and we had the chance and the privilege to continuously work with WB country and regional directors, who were not at all rigid and did not told us what to do just like some of those I knew before I became prime minister did. It was great news for me to find out that the World Bank was somehow compassionate and it is in the meantime quite inspiring for us to realize that not only does the World Bank have a heart, but it has a heart that can sometimes be a big one.
I would like to say that I am especially pleased to see Bank of Albania representatives and the governor, and representatives of very important banks are here today and I very much hope that the relationship with our central bank will become stronger and that you will encourage the governor to be bolder and more creative in further modernizing our financial system.
Thank you and I have to apologize for having to leave as I will attend the Munich Security Conference and, as you know, everyone is rushing to get there.
