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Albania
ECONOMIC SYSTEM
Change from a centrally planned economy to a free-market system
necessarily entails hardship, job redistribution, income fluctuations,
and a naturally unpopular abandonment of a false sense of security.
Albania's Stalinist economic system, however, disintegrated so
completely in the early 1990s that the people had little choice
but to take cover as the government enacted sweeping free-market
reforms. Article 1 of an August 1991 law on economic activity
ripped the heart out of the Stalinist economic system, providing
for the protection of private property and foreign investments
and legalizing private employment of workers, privatization of
state property, and the extension and acceptance of credit. Government
officials set to work drafting a new civil code, a revised commercial
code, new enterprise laws, and new banking, tax, labor, antitrust,
and social security legislation. Widespread anarchy, an almost
complete production shutdown, a paucity of capital, and a lack
of managers trained to deal with the vagaries of a market economy
slowed the reform process.
Data as of April 1992
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