Your Excellency, Mr Prime Minister,
Excellencies,
Distinguished Participants,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like to begin by thanking the Prime Minister, Dr. Sali Berisha and the President of IDB Group, Dr. Ahmad Mohamed Ali Al Madani, for inviting me, in my capacity as Director-General of The OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), to address the 2nd International Conference on Foreign Investment in Albania. My delegation and I are grateful to the organizers of this event.
It is an honor and a privilege to contribute to this Opening Session, sharing the podium with distinguished personalities as H.E. Dr. Berisha, and Dr. Ahmed Ali, the President of our sister institution the Islamic Development Bank Group.
OFID and IDB are cooperating in a large number of countries, combating poverty and promoting economic growth as is indeed the case in Albania. Our institutions are joining efforts to provide assistance both to public investments as well as to private entrepreneurship. Public–private ventures represent a favourable combination of public interest with private efficiency.
Events such as this conference, which bring together the government and its agencies on the one hand, and the private sector on the other, are vital for discussing opportunities offered by an emerging economy as Albania, and realising these opportunities through well engineered synergies. With the presence of the Development Finance Institutions as Financiers of last resort, Albania will pursue the path of strong materialization of the goodwill already gained in national and international economic fora.
During the recent years, Albania has achieved a solid political stability in a region prone with recurring conflicts. Its yet to be fully-realised economic potential and the geographic situation of the country, at the doors of a unified Europe, are unrivalled assets. In recent years we have witnessed how the improvements in the Investment climate have led to a growth in national, as well as foreign investments.
OFID is prepared to build up its ongoing partnership with Albania to new heights and broader horizons. Our cooperation with the government is, compared with other countries, relatively new. And yet, the wide ranging and successful institutional and socioeconomic transitional programs experienced by the country, has given OFID opportunities to provide support in such sectors as Agriculture, Education, Health, Transportation, and Water Supply.
Our cooperation with the Private sector is more limited and I hope that this conference will give us a chance to expand our support to Albania’s growing private sector.
Mr Prime Minister,
We have noted your plans to develop the country’s infrastructure and enhance the services offered by the Utilities in particular. We will consider most favourably your energy programs and most certainly contribute to their implementation. We will prolong our cooperation in the transport sector, realising as we do, its importance in a context of a transit country such is Albania.
As we witness a strong presence of the private sector in this conference, allow me, Mr Prime Minister, to note, at this juncture, that we are well aware that the Albanian economy is predominantly based on free initiative, as more than 80% of the domestic product is generated by the private sector, and that the per capita incomes today are twenty times higher than they were in 1992.
With regards to our private sector, allow me to recall that OFID and Albania are parties to an Agreement for the Protection and encouragement of investments which sets the institutional and legal framework in which OFID will operate in the Private sector. This agreement which has been ratified by the Albanian parliament is built on three broad principles; first, OFID assumes full risks of its interventions and the government has no financial obligations in that respect. Second, OFID is- to all intent and purposes -considered as a most preferred institution on par with such institutions as say IFC or EBRD where Albania is a fully fledged member; third, the government is kept informed of all interventions for which it has a right of objection.
As for the operational level, I will limit myself to establishing one principle and that is, that we do not distinguish between foreign and national sponsors, but we do however insist that the main investments are located in the territory of Albania.
With these principles in the background, it is clear that projects supported by OFID will need to be economically, financially and environmentally sound. Further, the development nature of our institution will lead most certainly to a clear preference for infrastructure projects but, at the same time, our concern for building capacities will leave a place of pride in our programs, for the support of the small and medium scale enterprises and most relevantly the financial sector. Our interventions will use a range of products and will aim at enhancing the capital accumulation of the country as well as its operating systems.
We will thus consider long and short term financing, debt as well as equity. The importance of trade for countries such as Albania has led us to deploy a new facility for promoting national as well as cross border trade. The facility will no doubt be of use in these days of lingering credit crunch.
Mr Prime Minister,
OFID’s overarching objective is to promote cooperation between OPEC Member States and Developing Countries, strengthen south-south solidarity, and help particularly poorer, lower income countries in the pursuit of sustainable social and economic advancement.
OFID, a parallel organisation to its sister institution OPEC, is a permanent intergovernmental organisation run by the Finance Ministers of its Member Countries. Since its inception in 1976, OFID development assistance has reached the neediest population in more that 120 countries, in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe. OFID assistance has reached US$11 billion.
OFID’s strategies are defined so as to respond to the needs of its Partner Countries, while preserving relevance and improving continuously the efficiency of our assistance. Over the past thirty years, the constantly changing economic and social realities, have led our institution to follow a path of continuous improvement, offering products and activities that address the changing needs of the populations in our Partner Countries.
This is why today, at OFID, we are delighted to note that our financing has reached a wide range of economic areas, building infrastructure enhancing production, developing human capacities and providing employment opportunities.
Working with so many countries and at times different political systems, we have learned that to be sustainable, development needs to be environmentally friendly and socially equitable. All the programs completed in Albania meet these principles. We are particularly pleased and impressed by, for example, the thirty six sector and cross-cutting strategies which make up the National strategy for Development and Integration (NSDI 2007-13).
While plans can fall short of their objectives, your country’s economic growth is most impressive and it is the great merit of Albania to have maintained its economic reforms and investments despite the ongoing global crisis.
Mr Prime Minister,
This crisis carries lessons for the future. It is most dismaying that countries like Albania see hard won achievements being threatened by crises borne elsewhere but at the same time it is encouraging that unwavering economic and financial policies have resisted the onslaught of regional and global predicaments. That Albania is, or will be affected, will come to no surprise given the nature and the gravity of the crisis, but what is satisfying, is the fact that there is still growth in 2009, and respectable growth rates being predicted for 2010 and beyond.
Given these auspicious conditions, this conference appears opportune and timely. We wish to commend the efforts of the sponsors and organisers and stand ready to bring our own contribution to its success.
Thank you.