”Washington Post”: Rama hopes to turn Albania into tourism champion

The negative impact of pandemic on Albania's economy is one of the key issues in Sunday's parliamentary elections, which the EU has set as a condition to begin full negotiations to recognise the small Balkan country as a member. The irregularities have marred previous elections in post-communist Albania.

Prime Minister Rama cites a new international airport opening Sunday, a construction agreement reached today for another airport on the country's coastline of over 300km, and plans to turn the port of Durres into a destination only for boats, yachts and other amusement ships as promising signs.

“We are on track to turn this country into the Western Balkan champion for tourism”, Rama said in an interview for” The Associated Press”.

Pre-election polls have shown that Rama's Socialist Party is likely to take first place in the election.

Albania attracted more than 6 million tourists in 2019, when tourism occupied about 9% of GDP. The 2020 preliminary figures by the Ministry of Tourism show at least a 40% drop in tourism revenues, attributed to pandemic. A regular curfew, social distance rules and other measures of control of the virus ordered by the government have mainly affected hotels, restaurants and cafes.

As part of the country's mass vaccination programme, the government has given priority to hotel and restaurant employees, as well as to private rented house operators along the coast or in mountain resorts.

Following earlier complaints of delays, Rama thanked the European Union's executive for donating 145 000 vaccine doses for Albania.

Brussels opened the green light to Albania and Northern Macedonia at the end of 2020 for the start of full-fledged membership negotiations, but no date has been set for the first meeting.

” Union with the EU remains Albania's main goal”, Rama said.

The integration process... is a process of overcoming obstacles. We have no choice. We must continue to fight and be there and we will do this”, he said.

Albania saw a 3.31% drop in GDP in 2020 due to pandemic and a fatal quake with a magnitude 6.4-magnitude Richter on November 26th, 2019 that caused significant damage.

The next” steps for the country are leaving behind the pandemic and the effects of the earthquake and attaching Albania higher”, the prime minister says.

“We want to be champions in tourism. We want to be energy champions. And we can be (certainly) in agriturism”, Rama adds.

We need to go further. And these are our goals”, he ends.