Central European Bank evaluates Albania’s position, future recommendations

The new package is expected to be moderated, but enough to reduce the public debt, as part of the GDP. Despite progress, there are a series of issues for which the EU sets some tasks that could help resolve them. The issues start with unclear property ownerships, low financial approach, high level of informality and corruption, an exaggerated regulatory burden and unpredictable judiciary, all of which, according to their conclusions, discourages foreign and internal investments.

Albania is recommended to take a series of steps, uncluding a property tax based on value assessment.

“Albania must insist to mobilize revenues, especially by reinforcing the tax administration; by enlarging the tax base, based on a tax spending review, and by adding a property tax based on property value assessment”, says the evaluation for Albania.

More measures are requested for reducing the public debt: “Fiscal regulation must continue, focusing on the fulfillment of mid-term objectives for reducing the public debt as part of the GDP. Further measures must be implemented for fiscal consolidation, if the debt reduction risks to not fulfill the objective”.

A special attention is paid to a reinforced Albanian currency, and more control on the non-banking sector.

“The remaining measures of the strategy for resolving bad loans should be implemented. Implementation of the measures foreseen at the Cooperation Memorandum for increasing the effective usage of the national currency, including the differentiated requests for the Albanian Lek and foreign currencies. More surveillance is needed for supervising the non-banking financial sector, by increasing the capacity of the financial supervision authority”.

Albania is also asked to make a definite clarification of property ownerships, create a functional and all-inclusive property registration center until 2019.

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