The House of Business, the door most recently opened to boost communication and interaction with the entrepreneurship and business community, hosted another round table session, an event organized by the Minister of State for Entrepreneurship and Business Climate Delina Ibrahimaj.

Prime Minister Edi Rama, banking system executives and representatives of the new financial services companies Fintech attended the meeting, with discussions focusing on the need to further expand state’s modernization through integration of technology and digitalization of the financial services and the banking products.

Prime Minister Rama considered the discussion of a strategic importance, underlining the fact that Albania can no longer remain closed off to innovation in the banking system, as technology, with its advancement, provides countries with the opportunity to take major leaps in a short time.

Providing more solutions and alternatives in delivering payments and financial services would allow cost reduction of the bank transactions, would combat informality and cash flow circulation.

* * *

Prime Minister Edi Rama: Hello everyone and thank you for taking the trouble to come here and for your readiness to take part in this discussion that, in my view, is of strategic importance, since I think time is high for us to better understand each other for the fact that we can no longer afford remaining closed off to innovation in the banking system, we can no longer remain a country still caught up in a gap between the way our financial system is built and works, the way our household economy is built and works and we can no longer continue being a country with an unacceptable volume of cash flow in circulation, dealing at the same time with a very high expense of the currency paper or money printing. We can no longer afford continue making efforts to formalize the country’s economy through traditional methods of imposing fines and carrying out physical inspection actions, because such a method has turned out to be unsuccessful and we can’t afford remaining a country, where banks still grapple in tackling the needs of the economy when it comes to the transactions speed and efficiency. In a nutshell, direct payments are mostly made through traditional methods.

Albania should focus – and the government is actually focused, but this is not a matter concerning the government only – on innovation. The law clearly stipulates that all second tier or commercial banks operating in the country should have started implementing the open-banking protocols since January this year and January was actually a postponed deadline.

We have a banking system definitely bearing all the positive features of a traditional system and we are all satisfied with this fact. Albania is no longer on (the Financial Action Task Force) grey list and we have all the reasons to loudly call on banks to live up to this challenge, which is a challenge for Albania.

It is a strong challenge for Albania and there are three areas where Albania can, not just progress, but excel in Europe and not only in the region, namely in tourism, energy and innovation. Banks are there to unlock the doors of development, to unlock the doors of technology and unlock the doors for Albania to move forward much faster, going from a country with the highest use of cash in the economy to a country without cash in the transactions in daily life and this is absolutely possible.

The main Fintech operator here actually operates with foreign banks. Why? This is because the financial services technology Fintech is not provided with the very same access here domestically. Can we afford dealing with these new forces stemming from the talent, stemming from the vision and the new mindset as if they are “orphans” in their own homeland in front of banks acting as if being fortresses with the movie-like castle gates that nobody can open them up and wide to allow innovation in?

We wish to see businesses selling their goods and products via these systems, we want to see real reduction of the cash flow, we want to witness real increase of money transparency and real increase in country’s revenue and we want to deliver on this peacefully and in complete understanding.

We will deliver on it in any case and we will definitely do so, because we can no longer accept and tolerate the inertia of this terrible situation.

Therefore, I would beg all banks, primarily the Bank of Albania to strongly lead this process, because the central bank should absolutely do its part. The Bank of Albania should definitely build an innovation supervision mechanism to oversee progress of work with innovation.

Thank you very much!