In our structure of economic growth, the most important part is agriculture which contributes by 20%. Thanks to agriculture, the economy did not fall into decline.

But in addition to these, an important role was played by the govt.-launched relief measures which created space for liquidity and sustained employment. Both of these drove up the consumption in the country during a difficult year.

The government supported not only the individual, but also the banking sector to continue providing liquidity to the business.
Sovereign guarantees issued by the government enabled businesses to cooperate with banks in line with their risk policies releasing liquidity.

The government issued two financial guarantees. One in the amount of 11 billion ALL, mainly to support with war payments those citizens who were affected in their work due to the Sars-Cov-2 restrictions which was used in the amount of 5.7 billion ALL.
While the second financial guarantee was in the amount of ALL 15 billion and is still open for working capital and investments.

The advantages of the loan with this sovereign guarantee are the concessional terms of financing, interest that will never exceed the rate of 5%, 6-month period of the principal non-payment, 60% guarantee from the Albanian state for collateral and a 5-year repayment period.

Donor Conference beyond the fact that it showed expression of confidence from many countries of the world, also injected liquidity in the economy

Both reconstruction and vaccination funds as well as public investment, which were not affected in 2020 and increased to 7.2% of GDP this year, gave breathing space for the economy and created the opportunity to crawl the way out of the pandemic faster than other countries.
But which are the three sectors that performed better during 2020 and at the beginning of this year and that gave Albania the opportunity to have an economic growth of -3.3%, when Europe saw economic growth of -7% and the Balkans -3.6%.

According to official indicators published by INSTAT, the sectors that performed better in this difficult year were agriculture, immovable properties, construction and employment. Employment has increased and this has also been reflected in increase of consumption. Today we are talking about economic growth that comes from consumption.

The support measures taken by the government immediately after the pandemic –triggered restrictions were the war payments, sovereign guarantees, fiscal relief measures for business, such as zero profit tax and zero VAT, increase of the minimum wage, etc. These elements reduce the level of revenues in the budget, but on the other hand are cash that remain in the hands of the consumer and are used by the individual to increase consumption and thus sustain the chain.

The figures are optimistic for 2021. Total revenues for the 4 months of 2021 recorded ALL 152 billion or 103% of the 4-month plan. Compared to a year ago, revenues have increased by ALL 19 billion. Also, exports in this period reached the value of ALL 109 billion, increasing by 34.9%, compared to a year ago.

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