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Albania
Ownership and Private Property
Albania's government sought to save itself during the collapse
of the country's economy by abandoning its Stalinist ideology,
reviving family farms, and allowing for the creation of small
trade and service businesses. It launched reforms in early 1991
that legalized private ownership and gave statutory protection
to joint ventures involving Albanian and foreign companies. In
its June 1991 economic program, the coalition government called
for the rapid privatization of state-owned property, including
the relinquishment of agricultural land to private farmers and
the transfer of ownership of industrial enterprises through a
free distribution of shares in mutual funds or stock in holding
companies. Later the government began auctioning off small enterprises,
including shops and restaurants, as well as distributing apartments
and homes to their current residents without requiring payment.
The government also planned to liquidate unsalvageable enterprises.
The new government supported calls for a crash privatization
program and the free granting of ownership rights to the "most
natural recipients" by arguing that the economy sorely lacked
independent decision makers and that no recovery could be expected
until private property had been established. The economy's paralysis
and widespread popular unrest underscored the urgency of going
forward with some kind of privatization scheme. The law on economic
activities provided for the privatization of industrial enterprises
and firms dealing with handicrafts, construction, transportation,
bank services, foreign and domestic trade, housing, culture and
the arts, and legal services. The law, however, called for special
legislation to regulate the privatization of Albania's energy
and mineral extraction industries, telecommunications, forest
and water resources, roadways and railroads, ports and airports,
and air and rail transportation enterprises. The government created
a National Privatization Agency to auction off enterprises; Albanians
were to receive first option to buy.
Privatization proceeded in fits and starts, but within several
months about 30,000 people found themselves employed in the nonagricultural
private sector. The government privatized about 25,000 retail
stores and service enterprises and about 50 percent of all small
state enterprises in each sector, mostly through direct sales
to workers. Also privatized were state firms engaged in handicrafts,
a brick factory, bakeries, a fishery and fishing boats, a construction
company, and six seagoing cargo vessels. The government also planned
a large-scale privatization of workshops, production lines, and
factories. The original plan called for the establishment of about
five mutual funds and transformation of the surviving larger state
enterprises into joint-stock companies. The shares in these companies
would be distributed to the mutual funds, whose shares would in
turn be distributed free to all adult citizens resident in Albania.
Limited domestic capital, however, made privatization of large
enterprises difficult.
Data as of April 1992
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