Prime Minister Edi Rama addressed the public forum organized in Istanbul by the think-tank “Fikir Sofrası” (The Table of Ideas), where he was invited as guest of honor.

The forum, whose topic was the “Perspective of a strategic partnership between Albania and Turkey in the field of Trade and Industry”, was massively attended by major Turkish industrialists and investors in energy, tourism, manufacturing, agriculture and health, as well as representatives of Turkish paper and digital media.

In his address, the Prime Minister made an overview of development in Albania and of our natural sources. In addition, he noted government’s intention to create a positive climate for investments.

“I strongly believe that Turkey is, for us, a very important source of learning how a country can change, from Istanbul of ’84 to the Turkey of today, and also for the very simple reason that we are sure that if we are good in this relation, there is a huge space to improve our economic relations, our trade exchange and the presence of Turkish investors in Albania” – the Prime Minister said.

He also noted that the approach of the Albanian government is a new economic model based on sustainable economic growth based on 5 priority sectors such as energy, oil, minerals, tourism and agriculture, where there are great opportunities for investment.

“Albania is a very beautiful country and our ambition is to create the conditions for very important Foreign Direct Investments in a few areas, tourism first and foremost.  What we realized was that we needed to design a new model of growth and to base our fight for growth on sustainable sources of growth. Basically, we have realized that there are five sustainable sources of growth for the country. First, energy which is based on the fact that Albania is the second richest country in Europe after Norway for water resources and for hydropower potential. Plus, oil and minerals. We have a country that has considerable resources of oil onshore, and also important resources of minerals.

Then, of course tourism, because Albania is totally an unexplored destination, and we are seeing year after year that very important publications on tourism from the New York Times, to Lonely Planet, to the National Geographic and the biggest agencies, especially in Northern Europe, are suggesting their tourists Albania as a new destination. Then there is agriculture and manufacturing.”

The Prime Minister put a special emphasis on tourism, as an area with high potential of growth which still has to be fully explored. The Prime Minister invited Turkish entrepreneurs to consider investments also in this sector.

“We very much hope to be able to create the conditions and to convince Turkish investors to come to Albania to invest in tourism. We want to invest in very high quality tourism. And Albania has this fantastic quality, that it is never a boring country. So, please come and stay in Albania one day, two, three, four or more. You can experience many things but you will never experience boredom.”

This visit of Prime Minister Rama is in the wake of meetings paid earlier to Italy or Germany, to meet and encourage foreign entrepreneurs interested to invest in Albania.