Investment Council Discusses Draft Business and Investments Development Strategy 2021-2027

Tirana, 21 June 2021 / Chaired by the Minister of Finance and Economy Ms Anila Denaj, the Investment Council (IC) held a plenary meeting to discuss the draft Business and Investments Development Strategy (BIDS) for 2021-2027. The meeting was attended by IC members, as well as other representatives from the public and private sector, and development agencies.

Minister Denaj stated in her speech that the strategy’s two ultimate objectives are recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, and regional integration and collaboration. The Strategy’s vision is for an Albanian economy that is competitive, driven by innovation and founded on knowledge, producing new and high-quality jobs by leveraging the opportunities provided by the digital transformation and the transformation of the international value chain. The Minister announced three particular goals for achieving this goal: attracting investment and internationalization, strengthening small and medium businesses, and developing human capital.

Among others, IC members and partners suggested more transparency on the public infrastructure investment plans and on the incentivized sectors for mitigating the cost of new investment, review of AIDA’s structure to expand its competencies in the region, provision of updated data until 2020 (especially as relates to SMEs structure), better analysis on the triple helix model to improve it for the upcoming 7-year period, the necessity to expand the IPMG role on investments and competitiveness to help implementation of BIDS, detailing on how access to finance can be achieved, increased budget for the implementation of the strategy, increased attention to the reduction of education inequality among districts to leverage unused labour force throughout the country, etc.

During its presentation, the Secretariat raised for consideration some suggestions for the improvement of the BIDS to ensure long-term sustainability through improved inter-institutional coordination, focus on SME corporate governance, better promotion of digital and green transformation concepts as a base for helping SMEs to reduce costs while investing in innovation, greater alignment between the new strategy with previous legal and regulatory actions, focus on attracting serious investors etc.

At the end of the discussions, Minister Denaj said that the Ministry of Finance and Economy is open to collect comments regarding the instruments foreseen in the strategy and expressed readiness to postpone by 1 week the submission of comment on the BIDS  (until 2 July 2021).

Full materials of this meeting will be published in the next few weeks, in our dedicated section https://www.investment.com.al/ic-meetings/.