Saranda, one of the coastal cities with strong tourism potential, is passing the baton to young entrepreneurs in the tourism sector, with impressive examples of successful businesses.
Prime Minister Rama started his day today in Saranda with a conversation with young people, many of whom have returned from emigration to their hometown to build their success stories.
The Mayor of Saranda, Oltion Çaçi, also participated in the meeting.
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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you,
So, I want to start with an expression of respect and admiration for what you are doing, and I want to assure you that both I and we are absolutely convinced of the untapped potential that Saranda still has and the needs it has regarding the improvement of the urban space.
The urban space in Saranda has become very cramped in the past, but time has shown us that this is not necessarily a hopeless situation. On the contrary, the fact that despite the high intensity Saranda continues to be a reference point, continues to be a trend for foreigners, is very significant.
We have included Road 6 in the investment plan, with the goal of transforming this area, which we have paved with tiles, into a pedestrian street where access for businesses will be allowed only during the hours when you need supplies. This will significantly increase the value of the city, as it will also become an internal promenade, in addition to the seaside promenade, which is currently the only outlet for the crowd of people who want to walk around the city.
Beyond this, I believe the time has come for you to consider expanding your businesses further into the interior, to break the traditional tourist season and establish branches of your tourism and hotel businesses in the inland areas. I’m referring to regions such as Delvina, Finiq, and Konispoli, which offer tremendous potential for agritourism, the development of winter hotel facilities for health and relaxation, and services that are highly sought after and well-compensated. These services require, above all, nature, tranquil environments, and that welcoming fireplace.
For this, and much more, keep in mind the Small and Medium Enterprise Financing Fund, which has made 250 million euros available and is now operational through the Bank of Albania. This fund offers a credit line with 70% government-backed collateral and an interest rate under 3%—all designed to help make such investments a reality. I believe the opportunity still exists.
Moreover, remember that once we enter the European Union—which we will—real estate values will experience an immediate price increase of at least double, as history has demonstrated in every country that has joined before us.
For instance, when Croatia joined the EU, property prices surged twofold just a month later because real estate became highly attractive to a population of hundreds of millions. This is akin to adding a new city to Albania, unlocking tremendous potential. Imagine the interest, as even with prices doubling, they will still be much lower than in the developed EU countries.
Therefore, any investment you make today is one that will yield significant returns, not in 50 years, but in just five years.
And I would encourage you to do this. Another thing we discussed is the expansion of the range of activities during the season, which Olti has started to diversify and organize more activities, creating more reasons to go out, to visit the city. But I believe there is much potential to create new cultural and artistic activities, to create new guides and attractions, utilizing every potential that exists here.
Keep in mind that for this season, we’ve made a new decision regarding the use of beaches, because this has been a huge problem we’ve had, and last year it became a total scandal with the complete usurpation of beaches by private entities, in this case, including you, to put it bluntly. And we have set a new relationship for the use of beaches, to give private entities the opportunity to conduct their activities, but also to give citizens the chance to have their own beach if they want to go to a public one.
We have reduced VAT specifically to encourage formalization. It used to be 20% VAT, but we’ve lowered it to 6%, the lowest VAT in the Mediterranean and the region, lower than Montenegro, lower than Croatia, lower than Greece, and yet you still act like you don’t understand.
However, to enter into a normalization process of this situation, and on the other hand, to avoid what I agree with you on, which is the most annoying thing, that you are engaged during the tourist season to do your best with customers, and then when they come to your door, inspectors start knocking on doors to check if rooms are occupied or not, they start with the registers, it’s a huge hassle.
So, after consulting with international expertise, we decided to give all hotel structures the option to accept a pre-declaration agreement where, for the peak period, they will pay, if they don’t want any inspection, 65%. Therefore, all those who accept this agreement will not be inspected by the tax authorities and will pay 65% and 30%. This has generally been well received. I don’t know how you conceptualize it, how you see it. I know you would prefer it to be zero, but that’s not possible, so with these two things, I believe we are setting a certain order of operations
Then the young people take the floor to share their experiences.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you very much! I want to add something else: keep in mind the law we passed called the “Mountain Package,” which is a law referring to the inland areas of the country. This means areas within the entire region, such as Saranda, including Delvina, Konispoli, Finiq, and where there is great potential for investment.
The second thing you should keep in mind is that the first 500 people who apply to develop a property, primarily for agritourism, will have a period with no VAT, no tax. I believe the VAT is 6%, as it is part of the system, but with no other tax.
– The Mayor of Saranda, Oltion Çaçi: Since we are talking about agritourism and sustainable tourism, we also have a participant from a business, an agritourism in Finiq, which I personally know very well and have tried to promote because it’s worth promoting these family businesses that are built in areas where it is really difficult.-In Finiq area, we have a family business in the culinary sector. The food we offer there is 100% Albanian, traditional items. I invested in that area after I returned from Germany. We’ve been operating in that business for about a year and a half, and we are very satisfied with the progress. In our area, we are trying to bring in as many tourists as possible and develop the area in the tourism sector. Additionally, guesthouses are being built there, meaning the businesses are gaining momentum. They are developing, and I’m happy that I’ve invested in my homeland and I hope to make greater progress.
– Before I left, I had a dream: to own my own restaurant. Now that I’ve returned, my friend and I invested together, and we’ve created a restaurant in which, at the peak of the season, we employ about 50 people. We offer good wages. Our friends from Greece, when they hear about it, say they want to come and work for us. If you think about it, someone comes, everything is paid for with accommodation, and they leave with 20,000 euros in their pocket. I don’t think they’d save that much in Germany or anywhere else.
– Hello. I lived in America for 17 years and returned a few years ago. I’m involved in real estate and construction. I worked 18 hours a day in the US, and if you work that much here, I’m sure the achievements will be even greater. You can really find America here if you work here, as there are so many opportunities and ways to succeed. We also work with tourists, and we promote Albania. My partner is from Poland, and he has obtained residence here and works here with his family. I think we should also mention the issues in Saranda, such as water management. For example, water needs to be regulated. If there are no pumps, the water runs out, and tourists end up without water. It would be good to look into this issue.
-The Mayor of Saranda, Oltion Çaçi: It’s true what you said about water. However, water is not just an issue in Saranda, but across all of Albania. Although in recent years, this issue has seen significant improvements. Some investments were made last year, and the year before, and they are still ongoing in Ksamil. We still don’t have 24-hour water, but this will take time. We are hopeful that this will be realized.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Regarding the issue of water, I must say that from the perspective of the volume of investment and the complexity, it is indeed not an easy issue. But keep in mind that when we took office, only 4 urban areas in Albania had 24-hour water supply, just 4. Albania had never had 24-hour water, not even in the past. Today, we have 43 urban areas and 98 rural ones with 24-hour water supply, but there are 11 more in progress, and then there are 5 additional areas where investments need to begin.
In Saranda, we are focused on achieving this because it is necessary, and I fully agree. There have been continuous investments, but they have been insufficient for another reason: because here, while you increase supply, demand also increases, meaning that, as you said, demand has been constantly putting us to the test.
On the other hand, what you said about America being here in a sense is very true, because there is still a lot of unregulated space with no rules. The moment we join the EU, these spaces will be more regulated. However, there’s also the other side, where these quick profits become more difficult, and what the young man said is absolutely true.
Whoever has land in the village, whoever has a ruin in any village of Albania, even the most remote one, and stays abroad instead of coming and opening a door to welcome and send off people, is making a big mistake in my opinion. Meanwhile, if you think about doing agriculture there, it might be completely impossible. But if you do tourism there, it’s not only possible, but it’s the most beautiful thing you could do. Today, you will make an investment that will serve you well both now and, in the future, and if you sell it, it will be worth much more.
– In Ksamil, a plan was made for the beaches, as you mentioned, to be public. An application was made at the municipality for hotels to apply for umbrellas to accommodate their guests. Now, I don’t know how this will happen, but in Ksamil, some things are happening that I want to mention. The owners of these restaurants are making contracts with hotels as if they are renting them, and they promise hotel owners they will pay the municipality taxes, the taxes, and other obligations they have. One of the hotels is mine as well.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: So, this is the ongoing battle for everyone to occupy space, in the sense of doing business. Saranda has historically had the public beach, and it has kept it here, but where there is more space, the municipalities will offer their share with umbrellas and deck chairs.
Naturally, we will need to exercise more control. The issue with controls is always that controls are very important because they also have the other side of the coin, and you know very well that physical controls are also a source of relationships that can degenerate into bribery. For this reason, we are also doing something else related to business, with all of you. After implementing fiscalization, now all of you have cash registers that transmit every transaction 24/7. We are now creating, in collaboration with Microsoft, an Artificial Intelligence model that will do what inspectors currently do physically to check if you’ve properly used the cash register button or if you’ve cheated. The model is being trained, and the results are fantastic, which means the entire process will be monitored nationwide by a virtual inspector.
This will greatly help minimize business inspections and make the relationship between businesses and the state much more transparent.
Meanwhile, regarding the beaches, we will now start the project. We have closed the agreement and approved the financing with the United Arab Emirates for the entire monitoring with intelligent cameras on roads and schools, and here we also have the beaches. But currently, I saw some incentives being carried out on the Kuçova base. At the moment, we are creating a beach monitoring plan with drones, and on a daily basis, we will receive information on how the beach areas are being managed. We are also conducting additional training with those in geo-spatial technologies who film with drones, take the footage, and integrate it into the space calculation network. I believe there will still be challenges, as wherever a rule is made, loopholes appear. But the Albanians are always creative in relation to the rules, and I am confident it will be very effective. Thank you for the alert. I don’t know if you are aware of this initiative that is being developed there.
Mayor of Saranda, Oltion Çaçi: Prime Minister, Ksamil has its own specifics because it is perhaps one of the only beaches in Albania that is entirely developed, and possibly one of the few places in Albania where the coastline doesn’t have hotels. So, it is a bit specific in the case of Ksamil. We’ve discussed this with the minister, and it will be treated a bit differently because, in terms of its natural development, it has been created and invested in by private individuals. Even the hotel is not near the beach; it’s far away, and you can’t really tell which is the first line, second, third, or fourth.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: I agree with this, and I’m not saying anything now, but I’m waiting to see sunbeds in the water, all the way to the water’s edge. I’m waiting for the water to be filled with sunbeds, like boats, so people can lie down, and they’ll charge 1000 euros for a sunbed. 1000 euros for the price of the sunbed, and then swimming will happen underwater with oxygen tanks, because above the water, it will be a man-made beach.
Prime Minister, I would like to talk about two things: the first is, I think we need to work more intensively on infrastructure, which means the water problem you mentioned, you are working on it, and another issue is parking in Saranda. When planning the road, please consider parking because for a tourist who comes, parking becomes a stress for them.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: I would like to add something because, really, the parking issue is everywhere due to the exponential increase in the number of tourists. Before coming here, we were looking at the parking being done at the entrance on Road 5. It’s a parking lot being built there, up to the entrance, for 14 buses, so they don’t enter, because buses complicate things even more. There are also 100 cars. But the idea for the future is that gradually we will build parking lots, and we have a series of parking lots with the Albanian Development Fund, from Lezhë to Himarë, in Vlora, and so on.
Secondly, regarding the issue of culture that I touched on briefly but you elaborated more on, we’ve spoken about the hall and will invest in the hall, in the theater. The hall has 500 seats, and I think with today’s conditions and standards, it could go down to 450, it doesn’t matter, but it’s still quite a good size to hold activities. Meanwhile, at the old maternity hospital, a project has been developed, and we will create the museum of underwater world, which will actually be a cultural center, not just a museum. There, there will also be training classes and registrations for water sports. So, you can register there, take theoretical lessons, and then undergo training and so on.
I really thank you a lot, and I hope that next time when I come, we’ll have another meeting together because I’m very eager to hear from others as well. Thank you so much!
