TIRANA, February 3 /ATA/- Governor of the Bank of Albania Genc Sejko stated today that, “The economic activity has improved during the second half of last year despite the difficulties caused by the pandemic”.
After the meeting of the Supervisory Council, Sejko said that this improvement has been faster than the expectations of the Bank of Albania.
“The improvement of economic activity was also reflected in the employment indicators. Employment increased by about 34 thousand people during the third quarter, recovering about 2/3 of the losses recorded in the previous quarter, while the unemployment rate dropped to 11.6%,” said Sejko.
“The update of our forecasts suggests that aggregate demand will increase and that economic activity will gradually move towards normalization over the next two years. This normalization will be accompanied by an increase in employment, employees’ salaries and business profit margins, which will create premises for the return of inflation to our target of 3% within 2022 “, said the Governor.
He also said that the negative impact of the pandemic continues to be present, both in macroeconomic indicators and in the financial health indicators of businesses and households.
“Our baseline scenario of expected developments is built on the assumption of gradual ease of measures taken to control the pandemic and progressively reduce its consequences. In this scenario, the Albanian economy is expected to record relatively fast and stable growth rates over the next two years “, concluded the Governor./p.s./
