PM Berisha said the foreign investors will find in Albania a favorable climate for their investments and have success stories.

Prime Minister Sali Berisha attended in Brussels the opening of proceedings of the Crans Montana Forum on Azerbaijan and delivered a greeting speech.

PM Berisha showed the great potentials Albania offers for the foreign investors and focused especially on tourism, energy and mineral resources.

The prime minister said that owing to the government of Albania achievements towards creation of a more favorable climate for the business and the facilitating measures constantly taken, investments in our country will be real success stories.

PM Berisha said:

It is a pleasure to attend this important forum and present Albania.

Albania is a small country that has passed through hard times, but also it’s the country of enormous potentials for investments.

Albania had an average income of 204 USD per capita 18 years ago, but today it’s 7400 USD. The average salary used to be about 6 USD per month, but it actually is 520 USD.

Our economy is among the few that avoided recession. It didn’t slide into recession because we were not part of the global economy –as a matter of fact all small economies are- but, our economic model functions. Our efforts for a sustainable development of the country, our efforts to make a dream come true, the wildest dream of all the Albanians to make Albania a developed country are being realized.

Albania is like a small Norway in the Balkans, i.e. a country of abundant water resources. We have plans for building 443 hydropower stations. There are already signed 220 deals with 220 private investors. Meanwhile, 36 hydropower stations are under construction. One of them is the biggest project in Europe being implemented by the power companies EVN (Austria) and Statkraft (Norway).

Albania has all opportunities of becoming a small green energy superpower in the region. Hence, I invite entrepreneurs to consider making investments in the energy field in my country. Being the most Western country of the Balkans, Albania also has the most feasible trajectory of the gas pipeline. Therefore, together with my friend, Mr. Ilham Aliyev, President of Azerbaijan we are looking forward to the most feasible project of the gas pipeline, that of the Trans-Adriatic, a shorter project, needing less time to be built and certainly of a future. Besides, Albania is wealthy in oil reserves estimated at about 6 billion barrels.

We are working closely with the government of Qatar and I believe Albania will become power distribution center in the region. Albania has also wind platforms which have constantly attracted the growing interest of the foreign investors.

Albania has a real tourist potential. It has the best coast. One can find a Switzerland by the sea. Albania has an average altitude of the country above the sea level greater than the average altitude of Europe. Albania has a great potential to develop and tourism is flourishing. By 2005, 300 thousand tourists visited Albania, last year the number of tourists was 3.5 million and this current year Albania is the first tourist destination in the world.

I believe no one will waste money in investing in my country and also consider investment in the mountainous areas as every project there will be free of tax over an 8 year period.

Albania is a country of abundant natural resources; it’s a country of oil. According to the recent data, Marinza is one of the largest onshore oilfields in continental Europe.

Also Albania is well-known for chrome, copper, nickel. And this is another reason arousing the great interest of foreign companies in my country.

However, we didn’t avoid economic recession because of the natural resources. But, we didn’t suffer recession because our economic model is based on low taxes and the lowest fiscal burden in Europe. Our model also functioned because we have a downsized administration. Our public sector is almost half that of our neighbors. Also we are big investors as over two years we are investing 10% of the GDP in the road system. We have built up to now 8000 km road.

In addition, the business climate is favorable. We have moved ahead with business registration and there is progress with investments.

All these factors taken together make my country favorable for the investors. Hence, I invite you to consider seriously investment in my country. I say, you will have success stories.