PM Rama: Peace in the region shall be transformed in development

The Economic Forum of Vienna established in 2004 as a platform to promote economic cooperation among the countries of the Adriatic and the Black Sea, had as its main panelists several prime ministers from the region, such as the Prime Minister of Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Austrian President Heinz Fischer. In cooperation with entrepreneurship and most important multilateral financial institutions such as EBRD, they discussed recent economic developments in the region and beyond. In his speech, the Prime Minister stressed that in its philosophy, the Albanian Government believes that the prosperity of the region as a whole requires the interaction of clear-oriented projects.

"I believe that what we particularly need henceforth is to focus, in our countries and in the region, on projects oriented towards results through well-defined goals and deadlines." Talking about Albania, the Prime Minister said that the Government came up with a whole new approach towards economic development and that this approach, together with the reforms brought positive results within a year.

“Due to a series of reforms and a change in government approach towards the business community, Albania made a considerable jump in only one year in the Doing Business Report: 40 places up.” For Prime Minister Rama, interaction, sustainability and creativity are essential to turn our region into a much larger market and make it even more attractive.

“Beyond our own achievements, our region should more and more represent a much larger market and it should make a big difference if we provide predictabilities, sustainability and find more creative ways to become interesting as a region.” But while bringing into attention to the new positive climate that exists today in the Balkans, supported and encouraged by the Berlin process, he stressed that in order for this new situation to be sustainable, it requires a new level of inter-regional economic cooperation.

“It’s more and more clear that what we need and what we cannot provide by our own means, separately one from the other are projects in a scale of the region: infrastructure projects, energy security projects and tourism projects and more and more that will make investors feel much more comfortable and will make the region be much more attractive for big investors. Politically, we have so far succeeded, but now we need to succeed economically and this has to go hand to hand with Europe. A peace that we have now should be transformed in a peace worth living, and a peace worth living cannot exist without having the projects that will make it worth living.”

A special session at this year's Forum is devoted to energy efficiency and information technology and their impact on economic development, with the participation of Ministers of Economy of Albania, Turkey, Macedonia, Kosovo, Croatia, etc.