Prime Minister Edi Rama held a press conference today, presenting key facts on the progress made in the field of Public Procurement and Albania’s standing in this process, as a result of a modernizing anti-corruption reform.

Together with the Prime Minister at the conference was the Director General of the Public Procurement Agency and, at the same time, Albania’s negotiator for Chapter 5 of the country’s accession to the European Union, Reida Kashta.

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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Good afternoon! Today we are here to share with the public several facts which, in our view, are highly significant regarding Albania’s extraordinary progress in the field of public procurement, and how and to what extent this progress is being objectively assessed by our partners, as well as the further steps we will take moving forward.

At the same time, since they are present here today, I would like to thank all those who are part of the leadership and expert group on procurement, for the extraordinary work they have done and continue to do. I will begin with something which, based on facts, I believe serves as a fitting introduction to this topic.

There are several statements that may sound as though they are being made about Albania, but in fact they are statements drawn from a detailed report by the European Court of Auditors concerning EU countries and public procurement. I bring them to your attention in order to place today’s discussion into context, but also to provide a clearer picture of Albania’s position with regard to one of the most important areas of the accession process and one of the most important areas for the European family itself, while also sharing with the public our satisfaction with the successive evaluations Albania has recently received, evaluations likewise based on facts.

The report speaks of a declining level of competition for public contracts over recent years. It speaks of a lack of awareness regarding the fact that competition is a key precondition for value for money in public procurement. It refers to key indicators for measuring competition that remain unsatisfactory in many member states. It mentions that more than 40% of tenders over a ten-year period were conducted with only a single bidder. It points to a lack of competition affecting prices and costs, and to an average procurement procedure duration that has increased by around 50%. Meanwhile, publication rates and the participation of small and medium-sized enterprises remain at unsatisfactory levels. These are only some of the conclusions of the European Court of Auditors’ report concerning EU member states.

Meanwhile, if we place our country’s position within this context, in relation to the fundamental indicators defined by the EU, namely competitiveness, and if we look at the competitiveness table and our country’s position within it, while contracts with only one bidder account on average for 32.3% of contracts across European Union countries, in Albania they account for 23.5%. And if, within the broader overview of member states, there is a large group of countries ranging from 57.4% down to 35.8%, Albania stands between them and countries such as Sweden with 22.9%; Germany with 22.6%; Finland with 20.3%; and France with 20%, with our country standing only slightly above them at 23.5%.

Likewise, regarding the number of bidders per procedure, which the report defines as an average of 3.2 bidders per procedure across the EU, Albania stands at an average of 3.7 bidders. Furthermore, in Albania in 2025, the number of public works procurement procedures concluded with a winning bidder and involving only one bidder stands at exactly 12%, whereas the European Court of Auditors’ report states that the average among EU countries is 14%.

All of this means nothing more and nothing less than the fact that, based on facts, Albania is at a very advanced stage of progress in this field and, on the other hand, in terms of its positioning at the negotiating table with the European Union.

Here with me is the head of the Public Procurement Agency, who is also the person leading this process for several years now, playing a key role in this transformation. She is also Albania’s negotiator with the European Union for Chapter 5, which encompasses this entire field and all its related topics.

Reida will provide a more detailed presentation, beginning with the conclusions drawn by our partners, and not simply from conclusions derived from data collected and processed by us ourselves.

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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you, Reida. There was much more data as well, but we tried to make this overview as concise as possible. One important data, for example, which is a very important indicator of this transformation, is the significant increase in the number of winning companies, not in absolute terms, but in relation to the number of procedures. So, there is much greater access to public contracts, which, like this entire overview, strongly contradicts the narrative of everyday media coverage. But as you may also have seen from the analytical overview I published a few days ago, an overview that we will publish regularly, this is a narrative imposed by a stable majority of sources that are openly against the government, a very positive indicator of the fact that we live in a totally democratic atmosphere in this regard and an anomaly compared to European Union countries, though a positive anomaly from my point of view, one that disproves all claims about captured media and all sorts of other nonsense.

At the same time, I would like to add something regarding the point where Reida concluded, because an impression may have been created that Diella does the work it previously did and then simply rests. In fact, no. We are now in a new phase of the process, as during this entire period 450 pages of highly detailed technical specifications have been drafted, worked on by highly capable local experts, and these pages were then submitted for review to the World Bank, which only a few days ago gave the green light, without objections, namely the “no objection” certification for every project in which the World Bank participates through financing. We are now ready to move into the phase of building an innovative electronic procurement system, a unique system powered by artificial intelligence.

At the same time, as I have said on other occasions, our experts have not worked in isolation on an island but have interacted with experts both in the field of procurement and in the field of artificial intelligence across a number of countries. An intensive workshop was also held here in Albania with 16 countries that already incorporate elements of artificial intelligence into their procurement processes. However, our project is the first of its kind because it aims to place all elements of the process into one integrated chain and make AI-powered procurement possible across a very large portion of the process, while ensuring that no business will ever again be forced to run around collecting paperwork for public procurement; no public official worker will any longer have the ability to manipulate business documentation, because all data will be gathered by Diella itself from more than 40 public registries that have now been digitalized, and will then be made available to businesses to activate with just one click.

This is a process that will extend from market research to the submission of bids, contract monitoring, and every interaction, all of which will take place solely on screen, fully transparent and traceable.

This will finally put an end, once and for all, for public institutions to the entire chapter of various problems related to drafting technical specifications, calculating the limit fund, reviewing offers, and evaluating them.

Diella will carry out this entire volume of work through intelligent algorithms quickly, accurately, and impartially, but I repeat, the entire process will remain fully traceable and for anyone who may have claims or objections, it will be entirely possible to return to the starting point and review the entire process manually.

The system is planned to be built according to the highest standards of transparency set out by international institutions and organisations. All publications will be based on the European Union’s electronic formats and every notice will simultaneously be published on the central European platform, “Tenders Electronic Daily”.

So, we will entirely enter another phase, and not in the next ten year period, but within this mandate for Albania in the European Union by 2030. This system is not merely a technological project, but a manifesto of our national will and of this governing majority for Albania as a European state within the European Union. In fact, Diella will mark the transition from one era to another in the way business is conducted. It is a complete overturning of an entire system and a reflection in Albania of everything technology offers countries and, above all, countries like ours, developing countries which through technology have unprecedented opportunities in human history to make leaps that without technology would simply have been impossible.

I say all this also because we will present our plan, naturally in detail, in the coming weeks as already planned, but I also have another reason, because we will begin recruiting digital technology specialists for this project and not only for this project.

AKSHI is no longer a single, unified structure. AKSHI- National Agency for Information Society. will now operate separately alongside a new public company, Albanian Digital Solutions, which will be a 100% state owned company that will aim, firstly, to recruit the very best in the market and pay them better than any company in the market, and secondly, to become a leading force in the technology market, while at the same time serving as the force driving forward the agenda of a transforming state that, thanks to technology, seeks to make major leaps in every field. That is the presentation.

Before concluding, I would also like to underline another point. In the savings highlighted by the Director of the Agency, a special role has been played by the Central Purchasing Operator, which is represented here today by its director and management staff. The Central Purchasing Operator has enabled us to make another major leap, namely, to stop conducting tenders within ministries, meaning ministries and ministers no longer have any connection whatsoever with tenders. At the same time, a large share of tenders is gradually being transferred away from the main agencies and, depending on their own choice, also from local government. Local government has its own autonomy, and we cannot impose how it conducts tenders, but a process of dialogue with the Operator has already begun.

In this way, we are creating a highly specialized structure to carry out processes which are far more complex than they may appear to those who comment on them without often knowing what they are talking about.

Thank you very much.