Prime Minister Edi Rama’s speech during presentation of new projects in the central region of Elbasan at a meeting in Belsh town:

 

Greetings everyone!

Thank you very much for your presence!

I am very pleased that those watching us now can see for themselves that the footages showing the transformation of Belsh town are not computer-generated images, but images featuring a real work as part of a transformational project such as the Urban Renaissance project being implemented in this area, right at the heart of the Belsh Municipality. The project has yet to complete since the objective is to enclose the rest of the lake and thus create a pedestrian ring road of the lake, opening up a prospect of tourism and agro-tourism development in an area with huge tourism and agro-tourism potential.

We are here today to outline a series of major projects due to be implemented in the region of Elbasan and just a few years ago it was completely unimaginable for such an event to be held in the town of Belsh, because just a few years ago driving to Belsh was a true challenge due to the lack of infrastructure and it was almost impossible to holds such a meeting due to the lack of a space where we could meet normally. I remember when we first visited Belsh to hold an election campaign rally, which took place in a road that was virtually destroyed.

Some aspects of the region’s development program place attention on the strategic power interconnection project with Macedonia which actually affects this whole area, further transformation of the region’s educational infrastructure and further transformation of the rural area with the substantial increase of the support for the agricultural and livestock production by providing the largest funding ever made available by the government for agriculture, plus the EU funding which places significant priority to agro-tourism development.

This area has tremendous potential to transform into a tourism and agro-tourism hub, into an area where the economy of the families, who find intensive agriculture and farming difficult, sometimes impossible, can be fundamentally transformed. Agro-tourism development simply means transforming a house into a guesthouse providing modest hospitality infrastructure.

Before coming here, we paid an one-hour visit to a newly-build guesthouse on shore of another lake to see how an old and poor house has been turned into an hospitality infrastructure, attracting an ever growing number of local visitors from the surrounding area and Tirana, as well as foreign tourists who have booked their vacations in advance. This is a way to generate revenue in a hospitality setting and create growth in an attractive and immensely beautiful landscape like the one in this area.

I am also glad that construction of the new road linking this area with the town of Cerrik and stretching further to Ura Vajgurore and Kuçova is about to complete in a project provides local farmers quick access to local markets.

I am also pleased that two other projects of national importance are underway in this region.

We have finally addressed the Tirana-Elbasan highway project problems. Construction of the highway kicked off and was even inaugurated during the electoral campaign, but it was soon evident that the project had been badly designed and it suffered extremely difficult situations of landslides and corrupt practices, which are being investigated and those to be blamed will be held responsible soon. However, this issue has been finally resolved as the government has already made available the due funding to ultimately complete this project and further shorten travel time and distance between this area and the capital city of Tirana. Construction of the Qukes-Qafe Plloçe road segment will also provide a new and shorter distance between Elbasan and the southeastern region of Korça.

I would also like to put emphasis on the fact that the government has already approved a financial package to promote further agro-tourism development, offering support to everyone seeking to invest in agro-tourism and I am pretty confident that many emigrants will explore opportunities to invest their savings in this field. Such investments will generate higher incomes than what they currently earn through their often hard work in Greece, Italy or elsewhere, since the government has approved a quite simple and low taxation regime, with a six percent Value Added Tax rate only, the same tax rate due to be applied on four and five-star hotels, which are key to the development of the country’s tourism industry.

The government will soon approve a very important helpful measure for the small business, bearing in mind that inclusion in the VAT system is a must, but which won’t lead to a price hike, or additional cost on small business operators, as many claim. But what happens is that a 15 profit tax rate is imposed on all small businesses which exceed a current threshold of the annual turnover of 80 million ALL. We want to facilitate this transition by increasing the threshold of the annual turnover to over 140 million lek and cutting the profit tax to five percent from the current 15 percent rate.

This will urge small businesses to declare correct balance sheets, without seeking ways to evade taxation and hide their income. The move will provide further incentives to small business, since the five percent profit tax rate on a 140 million lek annual turnover is incredibly favourable. The measure will help to significantly increase employment and generate new jobs over the next fe years.

I would also like to emphasize that in addition to road and education infrastructure program, a series of projects on construction and reconstruction of healthcare centres across the country is underway. We have identified some 300 healthcare centres that need profound transformation. We will support transformation projects on 80 healthcare centres, some of them in this area, this year alone.

I know that in addition to all aforementioned, the town of Belsh suffers from an old inherited problem, that of the potable water supply problem, which is a separate problem in the whole area, even here in the town city where the water supply is limited, but still in the rural area where limited water supply is unacceptable. What makes the situation even more unacceptable is the fact that this area has the highest rate of water bill collections as compared to the rest of Albania. Therefore, we have held talks with the Mayor of Belsh to immediately act and ultimately solve this problem. Of course, a considerable investment is required. I cannot say we can solve everything and everywhere right away, but we will start investing in the drinking water system in order to significantly improve supply.

I want to assure you that just like we have pledged –  and I believe we have fulfilled our pledges and commitments – to open a new way for Belsh’s rebirth and transformation, we will also stick to the commitments to advance this transformation, so that all this attractive beauty that has been created and all these signs of transformation that have begun to emerge thanks to the chain effect of this intervention multiply either in infrastructure terms or in terms of private enterprise in town or village to promote tourism development in the next three years.

This is an area that has all it takes to earn living on tourism, not only during the traditional tourist season, but in an all year-round tourism. This area also has excellent models of agricultural and livestock production. Having these models in place, this area has the potential not only sell production in the domestic market or to export, but also make a portion of this production available to the tourism industry.

Thank you very much!