Albanians spend less on food

According to teh data from the Customs General Directory, on January and June of this year, Albania imported 2600 tons of meat less then the first semester of 2010.

There has been a decrease even in the import of livestock and other goods that Customs classifies as meat products. The numbers show that this is the second time since 2007 that meat imports decrease. The first time was in 2009, when the crisis hit the Albanian economy for the first time. Generally, the consumption structure in countries with low revenues tends to change faster after an economic crisis.

If the revenues decrease, the consumers orient their consumption towards cheaper goods. The data show that the crop imports increased in the last six months for the second subsequent year. The Ministry of Agriculture says that 65% of the food demand is handled by domestic production, which has increased in the last years.

Different to the general tendencies, the meat production not only has not increased, but has had a falling tendency. Due to the low revenues, Albania is a country with relatively low meat consumption per capita, if compared with developed economies. According to the world food organization, an Albanian consumes in average 44 kg meat each year, twice less than the neighboring Greece and Italy. If the numbers will keep their growing tendencies, chances are that the low meat consumption will decrease even more this year.

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