Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama during the signing ceremony of the Agreement between the Albanian government and the World Bank on the Project of Integrated Urban Development and Tourism in the South:
Ellen started with Bob Dylan. It means that I am Patti Smith going wrong with the text.
But I will try to be consistent all the way through, hoping that all those who follow us will not read even this activity as a parade of success, but as a further and very well structured effort thanks to the cooperation with the World Bank team to open another path of great importance for further economic development and employment growth.
Without the support of the World Bank, Albania would be today undoubtedly a country with a much more difficult economic situation, with a much more problematic infrastructure, with a bankrupt power system, and with an overall state apparatus much less functional, and so on.
The World Bank is not a bank like any other that gives out money, but it’s an important strategic source where knowledge is given and received, and it’s not just about financial support, but for me it’s above all about the strategic partnership that we have consolidated in these years in order to find optimal solutions to the big and serious problems which we have inherited.
Suffice it to underline three important reforms that have actually guaranteed the turnaround the country has taken, and which would have been impossible without the World Bank:
Energy reform
Pension reform
Reform against informality.
These are three reforms that have begun to yield results, but above all they have yielded a very significant result.
The continuous bleeding, which led actually to the bankruptcy and financial collapse of energy and of the power sector, has been stopped and the sector is now recovering on a daily basis.
The continuous bleeding that threatened seriously the foundations of the country’s finances, with the old pension scheme, has been actually stopped, and today the scheme ensures sustainability and, step by step, a reduction of a burden that was barely bearable until yesterday.
The reform against informality, a complex and very difficult reform, has yielded some results for which we remain seriously unhappy, but just by referring to them, we have every reason to be optimistic that we will be unquestionably successful also in this regard.
The reforms we have undertaken are reforms which have been procrastinated and delayed for many years, thus creating cost and consequences which could have been avoided had such reforms been made years ago.
However, I want to reiterate that if we can judge today optimistically the approaches set out in these reforms, this is unquestionably due to the partnership with the World Bank which, I repeat, is not simply an unquestionable support and guarantor of the government and of our country from a financial standpoint, but it is also an invaluable source of knowledge, experience and appropriate advice.
Of course, many of those who hear this may think that this is simply the next compliment in an activity where we will eventually sign in order to get additional money, but in fact it’s not this. The World Bank has not left everywhere an indelible positive imprint, and it has not done things to be admired about throughout all the years spent in Albania. But the fact is that we have built with the Bank’s team a real partnership and an essential interaction, looking at things together one by one, while having an ongoing dialogue from which, I must say, we have learned a lot.
And if we were to take stock of the money we have received against what we have learned, I think that we can say without fear that we are wrong, that the balance is really perfect.
“Moody’s”, another global ranking agency, recognized just a few days ago Albania’s steady progress and mentioned some of the basic things we have done together with the World Bank.
Albania was ranked for the first time as never before, 58th in terms of business climate in the “Doing Business” report, but this would have been impossible hadn’t we had the advice and direct technical assistance of the World Bank team.
However, allow me to repeat that these are not reasons to be satisfied. These are reasons to be even unhappier because they give us all the right to think that we have the opportunity to do much more, obviously, with the awareness that much more remains to be done.
The signing today of a new agreement with the Bank on the Integrated Urban Management and Tourism in Albania takes us in the right direction, precisely in order to do much more where we have achieved a lot because we have opened a new chapter through the Urban Renaissance Programme. A program which, like everything that makes a difference, is much discussed; like everything that produces change generates a fiercer criticism because our experience has shown us very clearly that if you don’t want to be criticized, you must do nothing, and the lesser you do, the more you become consensual. But in this case, the truth is that this new chapter which is being opened with this deal, takes to a deeper level a program that is beginning to yield very important results in terms of the perception of the self in those communities that were abandoned until yesterday, and in terms of the perception that others have of areas that were effectively impossible to visit until yesterday.
I mean here the fact that the project with the Bank will affect two strategic centres of our cultural heritage and protected by UNESCO, a part of the treasury of the world cultural heritage, such as Gjirokastra and Berat; it will affect Saranda as a gateway for tourism in the whole area of southern Albania; it will definitely continue with Butrint as a centre of strategic importance for the development of tourism in the area, and it will extend, at our request and with the understanding of our partners in Përmet, in the whole area where we believe there is a tremendous and totally untapped tourist potential.
But, on the other hand, this project comes naturally and is attached to the project of our National Program of Urban Renaissance, thanks to which we could finance a new and integrated approach to tourism development on the basis of a National General Plan for the territory, which Albania has had for the first time in 25 years, and of Albania’s 2030 Strategy which was approved some time ago, having definitely as important guide the integrated cross-sectorial plan for the coast.
These plans, which have been designed in order not to remain in the long queue of plans belonging as potential merely to the industry of paper recycling, do actually avoid fragmented investments in infrastructure, and enable institutions to function in a well-coordinated manner, in the conditions when we have today a new Albania in terms of local administration, with 61 units that have the potential to be units of sustainable economic development at the local government level, instead of approximately 400 municipalities and communes that were part of a history which cost a lot to Albania in all aspects.
The parallel progress of the National Plan and of the Coast Plan with the National Program of Urban Renaissance and with the Project to be signed today with the World Bank, allows us to not only see but also to implement a model as complex as it is coherent and simple of tourism development through the urban, social and economic development of all areas where Albania could benefit extremely more from the tourism industry.
Actually, this is one of those rare cases when the Albanian government invests more than the World Bank, through the Fund for Regional Development which has also a special support by our Minister of Finance, through the ADF and thanks to the alignment of financial resources with the units of local government. The government has invested many times more in this project where the World Bank comes in financial terms, as a “junior partner”.
This is definitely a reason for us to feel, just once among many other times, “senior partners” in relation to the Bank.
Of course, we should not forget the fact that we have now a Plan for expanding by March 2017 in all local units, a network of the EU interconnection offices which will gradually materialize in all Municipalities. These interconnection offices will allow municipalities to submit independent and direct applications to have their projects funded with European funds.
This is something that comes for the first time as a new instrument at the disposal of the local government. Actually, the financial resources of municipalities become unlimited thanks to this instrument, but with the awareness that our only limit which we have to push as much as we can every day is the limit of knowledge. Our knowledge concerning all this great financing potential and the alternative financing instruments continues to be very limited. This is a reason to repeat for the third time the major role of the World Bank in supporting with knowledge the government and in general the government levels in Albania.
We have made an effort not to count ourselves as tourists, as it happened in the past when each of us was counted as tourist any time they entered Albania during the tourist season; instead, we want to count those who are actually tourists.
The numbers show us very clearly why we should be unsatisfied, although there has been a significant increase in tourism and in terms of the number of tourists. Suffice it to say that the number of tourists increased by half a million from 2014 to in 2015. In 2016, the current data which have not been yet completely finalized talk about a growth of 20% compared to 2015, which means that in fact the potential is very large.
But, on the other hand, we know very well that in the year we are leaving behind our tourist agencies had 25% more demand than what Albania could offer. There’s a big gap that defines also the gap between the contribution of tourism to our economy with approximately 6%, and the contribution of tourism to countries like Greece and Croatia with 15%, while the global average is 10%, or exactly as I can see here, 9.8%.
Ellen mentioned in her speech inspired by Bob Dylan the program’s impact on employment, and I will resume it, while concluding the Patti Smith’s role in this presentation.
Approximately 51 thousand employees can be counted today in the tourism sector in relation to in 2015; we don’t have a final figure for 2016 yet, but we can unquestionably go up to 250 thousand employees in 2025, and our goal is to be +100 thousand until 2021 which coincides with the closing of the second government term, during which no one can doubt that we will fulfil our duties with full responsibility.
Once again, a lot of respect for the representatives of the Bank who are here today with us, for the Regional Director, the Office Director in Tirana, and to all those who may think that in such occasions I speak about the Bank World better than I should, I say that it comes from a complex of the past when I have said many times not quite nice things about the World Bank.
Many thanks!
