Albanian Firms Name Top Business Environment Obstacles

TIRANA, November 11

Tax rates were considered the main obstacle to films in Albania according to the 2019 Enterprise Survey by the World Bank (WB). The data for the survey were collected from Januarys to May 2019. A total of 377 business owners and senior managers from the sectors of manufacturing, retail, and other services based all over Albania were interviewed during the survey.
“The Enterprise Survey is a firm-level survey that covers a broad range of business environment topics, including access to finance, corruption, infrastructure, crime, competition, and performance measures,” the WB said on its official press release.

Main findings

Firms are twice more likely to invest in fixed assets than in 2013
Labor productivity is still stagnating, thus constraining firms to grow further and create more jobs
According to the survey says that Albanian businesses are upgrading their capacities. They invest more in training and business process innovation to overcome skill mismatch.
Eighteen percent of firms introduced a process innovation in 2019, as opposed to 4 percent in 2013.
The labor market has become more inclusive. Women entrepreneurs increased from 13.1 percent in 2013 to 20.7 percent in 2019, while the proportion of female permanent full-time workers increased from 45.4 percent in 2013 to 52.8 percent in 2019.
Since 2013, Albania’s economy has also seen a sizeable rise in the share of firms exporting their goods to the international markets. “Albania is now at the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) average on this rather stringent measure of exporting activity,” the WB says.

Based on the findings there are the top ten business environment obstacles for firms in Albania:
Tax rates
Informal sector
Poorly educated workers
Transportation
Corruption
Political instability
Electricity
Courts
Business licensing
Tax administration

Source/Photo Credit: The WB