Press release of Health Minister Mr. Ilir Beqaj and Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Enterprise Mr. Arben Ahmetaj, following the meeting of the Council of Ministers:
Health Minister, Ilir Beqaj:
At today’s meeting, among other things, the Council of Ministers passed an act that we believe will directly impact health care improvement for our citizens.
Two diseases or two groups of disease with higher prevalence and incidence in Albania are cardiovascular diseases and tumours. This is why in the Government’s program we committed to pay grater attention to these two groups of disease. Meanwhile, it is already widely proven that smoking is a major cause of cardiovascular disease and lung cancer.
We committed in the program of the Government to focus on prevention and early detection of diseases. Therefore, we are starting the implementation of basic control program for citizens from 40 to 65 years old. We are also attentive to protect the health of citizens against the effects of smoking.
We started doing this in a much more comprehensive way 5 weeks ago with some changes to the law on health protection from tobacco products. The reason for this is that, firstly, we want to protect the health of citizens who are exposed to second-hand smoking in public facilities, but we want also to curb smoking.
In developed countries, the fiscal regime of tobacco products has been one of the successful aspects in curbing smoking. Even though the act is formally a fiscal act – because we are changing the excise law on tobacco – we believe that curbing smoking will have a direct impact on improving the health care of citizens, but it will have also a social and economic impact.
The change of the excise tax, which is expected to pass in Parliament for approval, will take effect gradually year after year and will be extended until 2017, with the intention to approach the minimum level of tobacco excise in the EU countries. But we will continue to seek rigorous enforcement of health protection from tobacco products.
The law is being implemented successfully since 5 weeks . I want to take this opportunity to thank first of all the Health State Inspectorate for the work done to encourage inspectors to continue working, as they have done in these 5 weeks, with honesty and without creating any opportunity for corruption practices or unfair competition. In addition, a very special thanks goes to all entrepreneurs, mainly those dealing with services, who joined the law enforcement and who, in collaboration with the Inspectorate, have made it more effective.
The government is determined to be at the helm of the tasks for the strict implementation of this law.
Than you!
Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Enterprise Mr. Arben Ahmetaj:
In the same spirit, the Government is committed to provide a fair, transparent and strong support to green energy. In this context, after studying all those measures or pseudo-measures of the past for support or pseudo-support to green energy, today the Government is significantly correcting biodiesel’s fiscal regime.
In the studies that we have done together with international partners, the current fiscal regime not only did not promote green energy, but it served as a black hole in the state budget and as a corruption practice over the years .
We are convinced that the correction of this measure, in terms of biodiesel, will bring fair competition and, above all, a real support for green energy and domestic production of green energy. The correction of the measure makes the Government to start thinking since today on how to actualize as soon as possible a transparent, effective and direct support, so that the norms required by the EU can be implemented, both for the years that have passed and for what actually we did not achieve and for what we seek to achieve in the coming years.
I reiterate that correcting the fiscal regime is the first step towards real support for green energy.
Thank you!
