Albania among regional leaders in implementing structural reform: EBRD

Albania has been positively assessed in information technology, agribusiness, industry, real estate, sustainable energy, urban transport and banking system. However, more needs to be done in sectors such as railways, insurance market and capital markets, the report added.

EBRD assessment indicators range from a rating of 1 to 4, where 1 represents little or no change compared to a rigid centralized economy and 4 represents the standards of a market economy. The sectors of information and communications technology and sustainable energy of Albania — the best-performing fields — marked as high as 3.

While reform in energy markets were hard to come by in the region, positive developments were noticed in infrastructure, the report said.

In micro, small and medium-sized enterprise lending, the market structure gap has expanded in some countries, owing to the poor situation of banks, which are suffering from non-performing loans, EBRD added in its report.