Economy grew, but not for state budget

26/08/2011 08:20

The revenues of the Albanian state budget as GDP percentage have fallen
from 25.6 in 2009 to 24.2% for the first semester of this year,
according to a report of Bank of Albania.

“Assessed in relation to the GDP for the first half of the year, the total revenues resulted at 24.2%, 1.4 percentage points lower that the same semester of one year ago. The biggest fall compared to one year ago, with 0.9 percentage points, comes from non-taxation revenues. Taxation revenues were assessed around 22.4% of the GDP by the end of the first semester of 2011, from 22.8% that they were one year ago”, says the Bank of Albania report.

The government’s revenues show what part of Albania’s economic activity was benefited from the government.

In the conditions of increased taxes, different to when these are decreased, the revenues of the government as GDP percentage should had increased too.

But this did not happen, which shows that either the GDP growth is not real, or the Albanian economy has had a significant growth in tax evasion.

Albania has always had troubles to calculate the economic growth of the government revenues.

During the period 2000-2005, the revenues of the Albanian government in GDP percentage had a consistent decrease, until they were reviewed by the GDP statistics that showed that the economic growth was lower that what was declared.

The current government seems to enter the same situation. The GDP has constantly grown in the past three years, while the government revenues as GDP percentage are constantly decreasing.

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