Extreme weather significantly aggravated Albanian pockets

The pace of growing fruit prices marked the record in November. According to INSTAT, the price of fruit last month marked increases by 20.8% in proportion to November last year -- the highest growth rate in one year.

Market experts claim that the lack of market production in some articles has become the cause of this strong price increase. The freezing spring and very dry wine have damaged agrums and certain grape species, thus making some fruits of the autumn season more expensive.

Traders claim that this year some types of grapes have been completely absent from “tavolin” and that there is very little production of agrums, since some of them have been dried up from last winter's frost and the dry wine we just left behind.

Fruits preserved the same import values, as well as years ago, with about 5 billion dollars during the January-October 2017 period.

Albania remains the country with the highest weight of agriculture in relation to domestic production Bruto (PBB) in Europe and almost twice the region, while the paradox lies in the fact that the country follows to be net importer of agricultural products.

In Macedonia, agriculture accounts for 10.2% of GDP total weight; in Montenegro accounts for only 10% of GDP; in Bosnia, only 7.8% of GDP; in Serbia stands 9.7%; in Ukraine, 11.8%; and in Russia only 4%. In developed EU countries, agriculture accounts for about 2% of GDP. As the sector has dominant positions in the Albanian economy, the country continues to import food products 4 times more than it exports.

This performance shows that the country is still in the first-year heritage inertia of BAR90, unable to modernise and adapt the sector to new market economy needs.

Rather, the measures taken in the 1990s with <x0 massacre” in the fragmentation of land per capita, cadre financing and partial development policies have disoriented the long-term development of the sector. Agriculture continues to dominate the Albanian economy for the number of employees with (39.7% of total) and with contributions to the Bruto Interior Production facility. /montor/