Prime Minister Edi Rama’s remarks during presentation of project on construction of Vlora international airport:

Thank you very much for your presence here at this crucial moment of changes we are bringing about in Vlora. I am very pleased that today we practically have the airport design on our hand. The today’s presentation here was a brief layout of the airport, but the project is indeed much more voluminous and is now ready to be implemented and for the construction company to kick off the construction works.

Before briefly commenting on this development, I would like to put emphasis on a fact that I believe it is important. Few years ago, the construction of this airport was just a dream, a long-standing dream, a pledge randomly reiterated during every electoral campaign, but nobody did truly believe that a day would come when Vlora would host its own international airport. The context was extremely difficult and what I have myself experienced was that nobody showed any interest in developing this project. No investors and private companies showed interest in the project and, indeed, the first attempt was registered following the Turkish government’s readiness to assist us, not for commercial purposes, but just to give us a hand so that we could build this airport.

We sought to reach an international agreement with a consortium, whose representatives visited Albania, designed a financial project and, following a very long negotiations process, we came to the conclusion that we were not close to signing an agreement of mutual interest and the consortium’s demands on what the state’s contribution were beyond our capacities. It all happened in a context when Vlora had yet to earn the today’s fame and when Albania had yet to become the country it clearly is today as a major tourist destination.

In the first eight months of the year, a total of 4.850 million foreigners have entered Albania’s territory, a figure many times higher than the tourist arrivals just three or four years ago. During the three summer months alone, 3.4 million tourists visited the country, or up 400, 000 tourists compared to the last summer, or up by 900, 000 compared to the peak season of 2017. We are talking about figures provided by the TIMS systems entry and exit tracking data and not about figures emerging from imaginary calculations. Such figures are very significant. In five years only, the number of foreign tourists and visitors to Albania has doubled. This has created a completely different context today, attracting growing interest of investors in tourism and those who are interested in developing hospitality infrastructure, something we see in the growing demands from leading foreign companies for investments in hotel and resort assets, including a series of impressive demands with which we hope to finalize some major investment accords in the tourism sector.

Not only Albania’s overall context has changed vis-à-vis this sector that is fundamental to economic development and growth and which will increasingly be one of the sectors that will generate a significant part of Albania’s revenues and create a significant number of jobs. Vlora is no longer what it used to be just few years ago, with local residents themselves finding it quite difficult to enter the city, let alone to attract substantial investment, even build an international airport.

What has happened to Vlora is already a well-known and acknowledged story by everyone. This is not the end, but just the beginning of a chapter of transformations, as more major investment will follow in the future. Meanwhile, it is indispensable that in addition to development of the mainstream transforming sectors, including infrastructure and tourism industry, we keep making efforts to intensify work and bring more development projects in the city.

Of course I receive an innumerable text messages from the impatient Vlora citizens and they all ask for investments in their own neighbourhoods, by sending pictures showing the difficult situation there.

The reason we should invest more in the city is because the city will increasingly become a hospitality area. Not everyone chooses to go to hotels, instead, just like many do along our coast and elsewhere in Europe and around the world, they prefer to accommodate in homes. At the moment, it is impossible that houses in the city’s certain neighbourhoods became available to tourists, because such houses are still in an anti-tourism context, so to say. Of course we should do both.

However, the entire infrastructure will complete with the second phase of the Waterfront Promenade (Lungomare) that will further extend to the Vlora tunnel with construction works set to start soon, and the project will further then to Orikum. In the meantime, we will kick off work to construct Orikum-Llogara road. Fortunately, the Infrastructure Minister is working to finalize the project and an agreement on construction of Llogara tunnel, which is vital to attracting a larger influx, because not everyone have the courage to climb the mountain in order to descent then to the sea. In the meantime, we will continue work to finalize the final segment of the Lungomare, extending to the Soda Forest and transformation of the port into a tourist port.

All these projects are important, but Vlora international airport is the most important center of development gravity, not just for Vlora but whole Albania. Today we see a growing interest expression and it is no surprise that foreign newspapers have already speculating over whom the contract is going to be awarded. This is a good thing. Imagine as if foreign media was to report just few years ago that a strong race is taking place for Vlora airport, speculating over the potential winner. The truth is that we are still in a process of internal discussion on how to proceed and this process is expected to conclude within next few weeks.

Now that the airport design is ready, we have the option of involving a serious international company to build and then operate the airport. We are now also offered the option to start the construction process ourselves, so that the project is not delayed again and we no longer encounter unexpected problems associated with any negotiation and agreement process with other parties.

We have already earmarked a state budget funding to allow for the start of work to construct the airport ourselves and then launch an international competition for the airport’s operation as no government around the world operates an airport. Airports are operated and managed by specialized companies. This is a decision we are going to make soon considering the growing real interest in the project and how much this expression of interest will meet our ambition to open a race where many companies compete and how much these competing companies will live up to our government ambitions.

This is part of continuing process. I am quite aware that a text message will be sent to my phone, asking “where is the airport”, as soon as we arrive back in Tirana. In other words, the construction of airport should have already completed while we drive back to Tirana. However, the project will take its time.

This project is very important as we are talking about a tourist airport. Many supported the idea for a single runway airport for plane’s landing and take-off during summer months only. However, I have always rejected such an idea, because I think that Vlora airport should be a much bigger one than that of Tirana’s international airport and host more operations and meet higher standards than that of Tirana’s airport. Not just because the city of Vlora is more important than Tirana. This is for sure. Vlora is more important even the New York, Berlin and Paris. What makes me to reason in this way is the fact that we all know the difficulties we encounter when it comes to Tirana airport. We face difficulties inherited from a very restrictive agreement that has been signed many years ago leading then to extremely high ticket prices, lack of capacities and practically creating a monopoly. That’s why we have been forced to negotiate with the company to give up from the contract term, stipulating that no other airport will be allowed to be constructed in the country without a permission from the concessionary. This obstructed plans to construct another airport. In order to free ourselves from this condition, we have conducted negotiations with the concessionary for two years and we finally succeeded.

It is important that we are now free to build other airports across the country. We have already started work to construct Kukes airport. Of course, there no reasons for unexpected surprises when it comes to Kukes airport construction and work is set to continue on schedule and complete by spring 2021 when the airport will be available to flights.

In the meantime, we are working the Infrastructure Minister is pressing ahead with the Saranda airport project. Both, Kukes and Saranda will host international airports of another profile. While Vlora airport will feature a 3.2 km runway, 500 meters longer that the 2.7 km runway of Tirana international airport, and as such it will allow for the landing and take-off of larger passenger and cargo aircrafts. The region lacks a freight airport which is an economy on its own and this is totally possible given Albania’s and Vlora’s potential.

Vlora airport will also host aircraft maintenance and repair service operations that will carried out by specialized foreign companies.

The three components, the passenger flights, cargoes and maintenance operations, turn the planned Vlora airport into a completed international airport and, above all, into an economic and tourist hub, as the airport’s contribution to the mainstream economy is estimated quite significant.

Based on all estimations and experience, it is said that every penny spent in airports and aviation is multiplied by 27 and if some 1000 jobs are created during the airport’s construction phase, that these jobs multiply by 27 when airport becomes fully operational. You do the math, but never forget that true professionals are needed.

What I would like to add is the fact that by building this important airport, we actually put an end to a story originating here in Vlora.

After the World War I, Vlora inherited on of the earliest field aerodrome, including also a hangar for the aircrafts’ maintenance and repair. In the later years, a law on civil aviation adopted by the government of Fan Noli in 1924 cleared the way to development of civil aviation in Albania. Just to satisfy the curiosity of those who are not aware of this fact, just like I had no clue about it until dealing with this history of Vlora airport, in 1933, people could fly to Gjirokaster, Tirana and Rome.

Now, understandably, lacking an airport, Vlora citizens “flew” by speedboats, but with time it turned out that speedboat is not a sustainable alternative and therefore time is now high to build an airport.

The first Air Force School was officially opened in 1962 in Vlora.

For these reasons and for many other reasons we can name, we are in the right place and time to pave the way to this process.

I would decline to set dates and deadlines, but what I would like to reiterate is that our objective is to open the site for the construction of Vlora airport by next spring. I know that spring in Vlora begins in October, but I mean the 2020 spring season.

In the meantime, with our national airline, which took its time to settle and start operations too, at Vlora international airport we also see a promising and encouraging perspective regarding the relation of the Albanian citizens, including Albanian nationals living and working in other countries, with the world of flights, because, beyond the complaints and what is said in coffee bars, Albanians turn out to be some of the people flying most and spending a lot in tourism.

Data recently published from our neighbouring country and not by the Albanian government showed that Albanians ranked first for the number of tourists visiting Greece this summer. Albanian visitors also ranked third for spending their holidays in one Greece’s wealthiest and most expensive areas. According to official statistics too, as many as 1 million Albanians visited Greece this summer.

So it is time when number of foreigners visiting Albania is growing significantly and the number of Albanians vacating abroad is also increasing. Figures speak for themselves. Our objective is also to create a competitive market that would put an end to the ticket price nightmare and, as you might have already seen, creation of Albanian national carrier has already produced its initial results in the market, since companies are constantly promoting lower ticket prices. However, this process would take time and patience, in the mid-term plan at least. Meanwhile, in the long-term plan, the whole system of flight ticket prices will fully normalize just like for any other passenger, because more opportunities will become available with the fall of Tirana airport monopoly and construction of Kukes and Vlora international airports.

Thanking you all for your attention and asking you to show a little more patience within the limits of your impatience, I would like to assure you that we are much closer than ever to the opening of the construction site of Vlora International Airport. In the meantime, I invite you all to guess a name by which we will call the airport. I have an idea, but I am going to reveal it sometime in the future.

Thank you very much!