This was confirmed today during the podcast “Flasim,” where Prime Minister Edi Rama and Minister of State for Public Administration and Anti-Corruption, Adea Pirdeni, spoke about Public Procurement, a field assessed as quite successful during the screening process.

Prime Minister Rama highlighted the SIGMA report, one of the most reputable reports in ensuring good governance standards, which specifically refers to governance in the field of public procurement.

“Where does corruption occur? In the relationship between the individual and the state, where the former requests a service from the latter. It happened in the lines where thousands of people would stand daily to obtain a piece of paper. Today, this is done paperless, without any contact with the state, meaning through online services,” said Rama.

The Prime Minister also emphasized that corruption is a phenomenon where money is involved, specifically in public procurement.

“Based on SIGMA, which is the EU’s watchdog and does not take data from the Albanian government, it doesn’t rely on what we provide but on what it verifies itself and submits to the European Commission, in its reports for our region, Albania ranks first in public procurement for efficiency, transparency, and protection of public funds,” said Rama.

The Prime Minister emphasized that Albania is rated in this process with 80 points, compared to 70.4 points for North Macedonia, 70 points for Montenegro, 68 points for Serbia, 56.5 points for Kosovo, and 55 points for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“There are a number of indicators that show what transformation has taken place in terms of market openness, operators, etc. I say this because it is not commonly stated, and here all the attention is focused on the show of half-truths,” said Rama.

For her part, Pirdeni emphasized that in the field of procurement, Albania is indeed a regional leader.

“This is also supported by the document that the Council of the EU published just three days ago, where in the field of public procurement, Albania has no interim benchmarks, meaning it doesn’t need to prove during the negotiation process that it has to meet requirements. There are only closing benchmarks to finalize this chapter. This indicates that Albania’s advancement in this area is significant,” said Pirdeni.

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