Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama delivered in the third edition of the awards “Golden Bee” for the most successful entrepreneurs of the year:
First of all, I feel very privileged to be here with the representatives of the companies that have been successful during this year, and I am glad that we have been able, by means of this award, to positively affect the psychology of those receiving it. Because I believe what President of “Business Albania”, Luan Bregasi said. He’s been doing business for 25 years now, and he said that you love money a lot, but as the good Albanians you are, you love awards even better. Moreover, in a country where people fight hard for decorations, who took them and why, who should be taken them away and why, but one thing is sure: nobody is going to take away from you the “Golden Bee”.
The epitaph on the tomb of the architect Christopher Wren, who designed the one of the most popular cathedrals in the world today, reads: “Reader, if you seek his monument – look around you.”
The monuments of these 25 years in Albania have been erected by entrepreneurship. Ordinary people, generally unnamed, without renown families, often from poor families, graduated but often uneducated, who ran faster in the pace created by freedom. Brave Albanians who rushed to become richer than others, in millions of ways, in millions of trails, initially in the complete absence of the state and rules, then, according to the state, according to the rules. Adventurers or visionaries who migrated or kept going back and forth by land, sea, air, or stayed here to follow success and money, where others would see only obstacles and poverty. Entrepreneurs of this country erected year after year the monuments of their courage to imagine the unimaginable, after a long dark period. Monuments that were transformed into companies, enterprises, large and small business, who created the economy, employment and constantly improving services. Of course, the new and short history of our entrepreneurship is full of light, but also full of shades. Its protagonists were neither angels nor fighters subject to ethical norms of conventional wars. If the foundation stones of the monuments erected in Albania by entrepreneurship in this quarter of century had mouths, in addition to wonders to be applauded with admiration, our ears would certainly hear horrific things. But is there any place, any other world where things have occurred in a different manner when the power of capitalism has begun to extend its roots in any land? Nowhere! Nowhere, nobody would like to hear what the cornerstones of the monuments of enterprises have to say, with the difference that they had touched the heavens of the free world, while our enterprise emerged from the desert underground, without freedom and without private property.
Today, we are neither in the chaotic years of the 90s nor in the beginning of this century. The second decade of the century we have entered has coincided with the consolidation of most of the things that enterprise created in the whirlwind of the wild transition period. Much else could not withstand time and rules, while unfortunately the myth of entrepreneurs as predatory, as malevolent, as an enemy of the public good and social morality continues to resist. But not only that. With determination resists also the myth of entrepreneurship as evil, with which the state should not interfere, and any attempt of the State to establish public benefits through a direct cooperation with the enterprise is punished a priori as a sin, a theft, as corruption.
The myth that has been demonizing entrepreneurs from the very beginning has set a very high barrier between enterprises and society, especially the youth. While it is as clear as daylight that this country cannot live a single day without the enterprise and without entrepreneurs. As it is clear that between Albanians living by large, medium or small business, most of them unfortunately under the pressure of this myth see entrepreneurship as an activity sanctioned by a blind and deaf moral of social purity.
Isn’t it dramatic that over 70% of young people want to work in the state and consider work in a venture a second-hand employment in the best case, and a punishment of the fate in the worst case? Isn’t it dramatic that no investments were made in this state in all these years, nothing to introduce a culture of entrepreneurship in schools, or a system of vocational education that would strongly support entrepreneurship and through skilled labour force would support development, and neither for a real administrative capacity growth of the enterprise?
Isn’t is dramatic either that for over 20 years, examples of successful entrepreneurship were never and nowhere promoted? Entrepreneurs lived for years as saboteurs, hidden, shy and frightened, and always and everywhere administration would attack enterprise, just as the invading hordes would attack the bargains of the newly-conquered castles.
There is no most meaningful information among many data that we can retrieve because of the description of this story, which is as notable for entrepreneurs, so inglorious for the state, to describe the relation between the state and ventures during these years than the culmination of abuse of entrepreneurship by the state, who would forcibly borrow 720 million dollars that were debts until 2013. None of you can forcibly take a loan from the bank, but the state took from you forcibly 720 million dollars.
I’m not proud today of what our government has not done yet in order to regulate the relationship with the enterprise within a new framework of European standards and norms, but I am very proud of the fact that our government, about which we can say whatever we want and everybody can say whatever they want, is the first government in the 25 years that has not allowed itself the right to exercise the power over entrepreneurship, in order to keep afloat with the money of the contracts for works and services that is unpaid.
The repayment of the shameful debt of the government to entrepreneurship, was for us not just the settlement of an old financial liability, but the foundation of a new governance philosophy in the relationship with the private enterprise. The philosophy that the state is not stronger than the enterprise and that the state does not have more rights than any entrepreneur as an individual, from the moment when the state is a party to a contract with whomever.
A state exercising power to lend money taken by force, for such it is, for activities at the expense of the enterprise, is not entitled to ask to the enterprise to apply the law, pay taxes or have social liability. Part of this philosophy is also not holding forcibly in the state coffers the money of refundable VAT, but returning it automatically, without corruption and without selectivity, through a structured mechanism, directly into the coffers of companies.
But this philosophy dictates us also the daily effort to build a new relationship between enterprises and the administration, first of all the tax and customs administration, but also the administration in general. I know that the day has not come to be proud of the behaviour and the quality service of tax or customs, or in other offices where entrepreneurs continue to face old phenomena, misconduct that is not suitable to a serious state, and with a service quality that sometimes is nothing like the quality of service that your ventures are able to provide today.
On the other hand, referring to a small example among many examples that you can take, you who are looking for an administrator and you find it difficult to point your finger on an administrator who you can entrust with the keys of the company, you know better than anyone what it takes to change the old culture built over the years, and to demolish its edifice, and replace it with a new building and a new culture. It is neither an easy nor a quick work to be done.
But I think you agree with me on the fact that, in a country where not many years ago the tax administration directors would collect the money from businesses in a shoe box and keep it under the table in their office – those laughing have seen the shoe boxes; or that until 2 and a half years ago, directors would act as commanders of punitive operations, and would go from warehouse to warehouse to collect the money, it is not little progress that today these grim realities that accompanied the enterprise for years look like nightmares.
Precisely because we want to govern with a new philosophy, to make progress in this relationship, despite huge financial difficulties, we decided to repay the whole mountain of debts. As of today, we have repaid debts amounting to 600 million dollars to all those who have regular documentation. In fact, the remainder belongs to the previous years, and our inability to repay it is related to documentation, not to our lack of willpower.
With the same philosophy we wrote off fines amounting to 26 million dollars, charged to entrepreneurship before and after the elections of 2013. Some of the victims are here in this room. We collected in just one year more income from tax and customs than in the past 5 years of the previous government, or in the first 9-month period of this year we collected 266.5 million dollars more than the best year of the previous government.
It is not these figures that make us proud, but the fact that these revenues have been collected because we built a new partnership relationship with entrepreneurship. The fact that these revenues have been collected by respecting always, without forgetting the still present shortcomings in behaviour, approach, quality of service by the administration, but without phone calls, without down payments, without the philosophy “Give me a few million today so I can plan for tomorrow, and then I will pretend I don’t see so that you can plan.”
There are this year 45.600 more active businesses than in 2013. Meanwhile, the latest figures of import of machinery equipment for a 9-month period has been 18% higher than last year. That is why we removed VAT despite all financial difficulties, and refused this year the request of the IMF to reset VAT on machinery and equipment in the fiscal package next year, because the new economic model that we have started to build, and which has taken into account the fact that Albania’s growth opportunities cannot rely any longer on already depleted sources of growth such as construction or remittances, but that the country should develop by referring to sustainable growth sources and have an increasingly production and real employment oriented economy. For this reason also before calculating how more money we will have in the budget, we calculated how more money we will leave to the enterprise to make budget.
I thing I do not exaggerate if I say that this is the first government in 25 years that has not divided the economy into two parts, that has not seen the state coffers, the state budget, the state financial records as a reason for not considering at all the coffers of entrepreneurship, with the budget of entrepreneurship and its accounting records, but tries instead, despite financial difficulties inherited from misrule, to see these things combined along with balanced accounts between what we have left from the budget and what we have gained in the economy, what we have gained in investments and what we have gained in employment.
In the first 6 months of this year, agricultural and livestock products grew 35% compared with the same period last year. Exports grew by 20%. We are unconcerned because we have removed some of the money we would take from the budget and have created incentives for rural entrepreneurship, and therefore we will continue to facilitate next year the access of rural entrepreneurship, and also for this we had a debate and we succeeded in not lowering reimbursable VAT for agricultural products.
We have reason to believe that foreign investments will go this year toward the amount of 100 million dollars more than last year. This is not the amount that will save Albania from inevitable afflictions, to move towards a process where there is no more time to waste, bypassing obstacles that can be overcome only with reforms. It is not an increase that will take us to the point where we can immediately say that whatever increase in the economy will be tangible by every family across the country. 2.7% is a real and obviously very positive growth, and if we consider that until 2 years ago we had to do with a negative, stagnant and above all threatening trend for the economy which was completely stalled. Of course, economy is not flying, but is creating step by step the conditions for us to aim higher tomorrow. If we expect next year to have more than 3% increase, again this growth will not make tangible for every family the impact of economic change. In order to reach out to every family, and be tangible for every family, you know better than I, it should go over 4%.
On the other hand there is something that figures do not tell, something which I believe more than any other figure, and it is the health of the relationship between the state and the enterprise. If we succeed, and we will do our utmost, in strengthening this relationship, expectations will be easily exceeded. If we succeed together in making step back the pressure of the myths I mentioned earlier, the myth of the entrepreneur as the malevolent and the myth of cooperation with the enterprise as a sin, we will for sure move forward.
170 thousand new or formalized jobs are not little, if we consider that are 170 thousand people who either had no work, or worked out of the records; and some of them were either totally unemployed or worked as slaves. In a European sense of the workplace, the workplace out of the records does not exist; it is not called a job, and if you work out of the records you are punished. We promised not and will not promise you that you will reduce taxes, but we promised that we will not raise taxes. Again, I assure you that we will not increase your tax profits, on the contrary, I believe that together we will do the right thing, and if reforms will continue with determination and without being impressed by lamentations of the owls that usually in this case are those not affected by the reforms, but are affected because the reforms, are not affected because they have to pay the electricity bill, or pay tax on wages, but are affected because they have to start agreeing with the idea that all the dark channels that of interest, influence and of the money derived from them in the informal sphere will not be there any longer.
We took a very important decision that is not purely financial for us. It is part of our philosophy to build partnerships and strengthen partnerships, since there lies the secret of growth or backwardness, and the relationship between the state and the enterprise, between the individual and the doing business. We removed the tax to small businesses with a turnover of up to 50 million, not simply to financially facilitate small business, but to tell others that they have a chance to run a small business without having to pay any taxes, provided that they pay health and social insurances and give the tax receipt.
In over 20 years we have created such a huge gap between people and work, identifying work as employment in the state, and identifying the state as the largest employer, so that we don’t have two choices, but only one choice. Rely strongly on entrepreneurship, increase as much as possible the value created by enterprise, to put entrepreneurs in the same pedestal that our societies put athletes, singers – here in Albania, even politicians. In doing so we will give young people a model of success, and a chance to not limit their imagination about the possibility to become rich if they want to become rich.
But direct relationship and direct support of entrepreneurship is no only one side of the coin in the country we have inherited. It is the whole geometric body with the many prisms of the reforms, which are in process, like an operation that has stopped the bleeding, but we need to get remove all of the metastases of a cancer created for years, which did not only limit the vital function of every organ.
It limited also the vital function of education. Let’s say it all, people in Albania haven’t received proper education for 25 year. One of the certain sources of economic growth and a mid-term prosperity of our country has been its natural assets, oil, gas, water for electricity, but we don’t have properly trained engineers and technicians.
If we refer to every sector where we have sources of growth, we find that not only have to deal today with the emergency, but we do not have the army of the educated people who make the difference.
I talked about education, but we can consider one by one every vital function of the body of a state, that forcibly work with reduced capacity. Without considering that sectors have never had any relationship or interaction with each other. An organism where every organ works on its own, where the brain gives commands and they are not received by either the hand or foot, but just by the mouth.
Despite the direct report, energy reform is, not in very indirect way, a support for the enterprise and for its development. Pension reform is a support for the enterprise and for its development. Territorial and administrative reform is a support for the enterprise and for its development, and not to list them all, primarily because it has drastically reduced the spaces and opportunities for corruption anywhere there is some interest and an inch of land to undertake an investment.
Service reform is definitely a support for the enterprise. If we have embarked today a service reform and want to transform mortgage offices once and for all after more than 20 years, or want to transform all counters of the state, this is a direct support to entrepreneurship and to increased opportunities for entrepreneurship.
Reform against informality is undoubtedly a direct support for the legitimate enterprise. We talked about the foundations of monuments. Now, monuments are on the ground. You know what foundations consist of, but there is no chance that we will continue accepting a daily-basis illegitimacy; on the one side, companies that operate according to the law and the rules and on the other hand, other companies that do whatever they want by distorting competition, the market, by distorting the ways to make profit and by stimulating corruption. After all, informality is the core of how the whole system of corruption works.
The judicial reform is without any doubt another necessity to have an enterprise that feels free throughout its operation process. Not unconcerned, for you are never going to be unconcerned, considering that you have decided to do business. It is not my intention to bring bad luck to anyone among you, but I always remember what Luan Bregasi says, that in 25 years there were many of you who have passed away from a heart attack. So far, no politician has passed away from a heart attack. More than others, stress is yours. But however, to have the opportunity to compete in a field where competition consists of ideas, courage, merit and all other factors, and not corruption and informality.
Justice reform will be either done or will be done!
Do not waste much time listening to whom says what. The judicial reform will be either done or will be done, because it is an inescapable imperative of a historical moment, which is much stronger than all of us together.
I would like to conclude with a quotation form Voltaire who said: “It is not enough to want to do the good, but to act properly.”
This is the core of the reforms. I do not think that all those who oppose the reforms, or all of them going out in the squares with towels crying over the poor, do it for the sake of politics. I believe that there are people who oppose reforms because they really do want to cry in public over the poor. And the poor are always cannon fodder wherever there are reforms. The simplest and the most deceitful way to oppose the reforms is to hypocritically be on the side of the poor and say that the poor are being affected.
The problem is that we haven’t succeed in these 25 years to take the poor out of poverty, precisely because we have not made reforms. Saying that reforms are a surgery that the exhausted body of Albania cannot endure, means that we should let die a body with cancer that we cannot operate, or to hope that a miracle will happen that will make that body revive, or there are some who think that this body does not deserve any more than this, so it should be left there, laying in agony, and not even try to operate it or expects that a miracle will occur.
This award is a symbolic expression of our new philosophy in relation to entrepreneurship. Surely none of you no need for this award, but we need it in order to tell you and pall other entrepreneurs that we are very aware of the added value that you create every day, that we are very aware that only through you, through a culture of entrepreneurship, through the entrepreneurial spirit, entrepreneurial growth, we can overcome challenges, and in the first place, the challenge of poverty.
The problem is not the rich, the problem is poverty. We are here today, in this edition, precisely for this reason, to give you this award. This award certainly goes to those who are elected, those selected among the elected, but it is an award for entrepreneurship. Ultimately, the “Golden Bee” is Albanian entrepreneurship, while politics is the “hornet”.
Now, I have to give an award as well. Before I announce the winner, I want to assure you that in addition to the 5 candidacies that I saw, only here in this room there are probably 5 other candidates who deserve to be nominated for this this award, while outside this room there many more. I want to repeat that, without denying any merit to the Director of OSHEE, without denying any merit to all those who hold the office of the administrator and belonging to our side, namely men, it is for sure, and I believe that you and your companies do confirm it, that women and girls have an additional sense in the management skill. I was impressed by the fact that 2 or 3 representatives of companies here were women. I saw no man stand up and say: I am here tonight, because my boss couldn’t make it here. The way they talked proved that they are absolutely brilliant and deserve the confidence of their entrepreneurs.
Therefore, the “Golden Bee 2015” for the woman administrator of the year, goes to Ogerta Manastirliu. I can predict since now that this is going to be a controversy award, because Ogerta works probably in the most difficult front, which is hospital service. We are all aware that hospital service has not reached yet the standards Albanians deserve, and it is not yet how we want it to be, and we are going to succeed in this. I wish you to never have to go to the University Hospital Centre, but if you have to and if you have already been there, I am convinced that you will see many significant changes done in that institution, and many others will be done in the second period of our mandate, in order for it to not provide a quality service, but to become a model with which we can say, “Here is how our hospital service can change.”
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The Ministry of Economic Development, Tourism, Trade and Entrepreneurship, under the auspices of Prime Minister Edi Rama and with the support of the Union of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, and Business Albania, organized the gala “Golden Bee 2015” to assess the best enterprises of the year.
The purpose of this event, that has been a tradition for three years, is to promote the work of the Albanian entrepreneurship and its contribution to the economic development and employment in the country.
Minister Ahmetaj defined this event an evening with and for entrepreneurship, in order to express gratitude and appreciation to all those who try to succeed in an economic field has not always been easy and friendly in 25 years.
48 businesses were nominated during the evening in 12 different categories, having each of them one winner selected. Among the nominees were also 10 public administrators of the years, in the categories “Women” and “Men”.
Following are the award categories and the winners for each category:
1. Made in Albania- Musai Olive Oil
2. Innovative entrepreneurship – Çelësi Media Group
3. Business woman – Eleni Babameto
4. Seal of Quality – Agro.al
5. Social accountability – Bloja sha
6. Young entrepreneurs- D&D
7. Enterprise in culture – Albanian American Development Fund
8. Enterprise in industry – Dekoll
9. Small business – M.C.P
10. Special taste – Rapsodia
11. Outstanding hospitality – Hotel Tirana International
12. Employment – Ama Dress
The best administrator of the year in the category “Women” was announced the Director of the University Hospital in Tirana, Ogerta Manastirliu, while the best administrator of the year in the category “Men” was announced the General Director of the Distribution Operator of Electricity, Adrian Çela.
