IC Secretariat Discusses Investment Promotion and Legal Security on Property

TIRANA, May 21

Despite some recent improvements in the international rankings, Albania lags behind as regards to respecting property rights and full and final property registration─two critical national challenges which affect the good governance of the country. Property-related investors’ concerns have been highlighted in almost all the topics brought in the table of Investment Council since 2015.

The Secretariat of Albania Investment Council held last Friday a technical consultation meeting “On Investment Promotion and Legal Security on Property,” with 25 representatives from state institutions, private companies, business associations, chambers of commerce, municipalities, experts, etc.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the preliminary findings and potential recommendations for intervention drafted by the Secretariat of the Investment Council in close consultation with different business partners. The object of the Secretariat’s work has been to highlight main property-related investors’ concerns and provision of respective recommendations in coherence with the development of national strategic sectors, such as agriculture and tourism.

During this focus group meeting, the discussions were focused mainly on the prioritization of interventions as relates to the full registration of state properties (at least for the premises occupied by the state institutions) as well as in investment priority areas while respecting property titles;

importance of the social component as relates to the formalization process;
establishing a national standard of property registration compliant with EU standards;
removing overlapping among various methodologies used for mapping and necessity to use modern technologies;
unification of registration institutions, enforcement of coordination between central institutions and municipalities as well as registering offices;
provision of business comments to the draft-laws “For the finalization of the transitional processes of property in the Republic of Albania,” etc.

The preliminary findings and recommendations were subject to a constructive debate among the participants. The raised comments and suggestions will be reflected by the IC Secretariat in the final draft of the analysis to be submitted to the IC members by next week.

The subject of property rights is part of the IC agenda for 2019. Next step is the discussion of the subject in the table of the IC at the end of May.

Source/Photo Credit: Albania Investment Council