''With 400 Italian or so Italian-Albanian companies working in Albania, Italy is the main investor in Albania according to the number of operators and only ranks second according to the investments' value''.

So said Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi stated, during the congress ''Albania in Europe, new opportunities of economic and industrial cooperation for Italian enterprises''.

Economic cooperation'', Terzi added, ''also took advantage of people's mobility between Albania and the EU ensured by the visa-free regime, which entered into force on December 2010''.

Terzi also pointed out that ''the Italian government trusts Albania's future and is intentioned to go on supporting it in its process of economic and social modernisation''. It was not by chance that ''in the last 20 years, our cooperation allocated a total sum exceeding 540 mln euros for development in donations and loans''.

The memorandum signed in 2010 provides for further allocations totalling 51 mln euros in donations and loans and a debt-conversion agreement. This is the first agreement of its kind Albania signed with a donor country''