Press statement by Arben Ahmetaj, Minister of State for Reconstruction and coordinator for Albania 2030 National Plan:
I stand before you today to communicate with the citizens about progress on the Albania 2030 National Plan. The National Plan will not be a strategy based on economic theories, but a detailed development program of concrete reform efforts, concrete actions, and concrete projects on a schedule month after month and year after year. The National Plan is designed to maintain the continued economic transformation of Albania and make Albanians’ dream for Albania’s European integration come true.
The 2030 National Plan, as the Prime Minister Edi Rama confirmed a day ago, includes an important measure for the majority of Albanians working in the private sector, the Albanian citizens running or working in a small business. The Premier communicated to Albanian citizens the latest initiative to introduce a zero profit tax on small businesses with an annual turnover of up to 14 million lek.
Zero profit tax on all small business activities until 2029. This is a huge opportunity being offered to every Albanian, either in the country or abroad, who wishes to open a business, a start-up in the Republic of Albania and they will all be exempted from having to pay a profit tax, free them of continued inspections from the tax inspectors and officials, in this way they will join the state institutions for the benefit of the state budget by positively pressuring and pushing big business to increasingly formalize.
The zero profit tax rate, as the Premier referred to it yesterday, could be coupled with the removal of the value added tax. We have employed a number of international and local specialists in developing the 2030 Albania National Plan so that the plan reflects and addresses the needs of every Albanian citizen who is seeking to earn a honest living, every Albanian national who wishes to return back home and launch a business in Albania and I am inclined to affirm that the request made by the Premier regarding the value added tax, after the calculations and the projections we make over the years or the possible procedures we review to simplify the entire process and our fiscal policy and tax approach to the entrepreneurship, including the value added tax, I tend to share with Albanians the news that a decision to lift the value added tax may be announced very soon.
This initiative will be confirmed in parliament during this season. Before the summer recess by end of July, small business and Albanian citizens will see confirmed by Parliament what the Premier said and advanced as a government initiative yesterday to further ease fiscal burden on every citizen and the small business in particular that is seen as a major employment source in the country, as it already showed during the Covid 19 epidemic.
