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OPINEWS

The coast for the minority, emigration for the majority/ The real cost of the resort model

Politiko 2026-06-16 11:32:17

The coast for the minority, emigration for the majority/ The real cost of the

Irena Beqiraj

In May 2015, the Law on Strategic Investments was adopted, and the main criteria for qualifying an investment as strategic were only two:
The public interest of the investment and the financial criterion, which shows the strength and potential for the realization of the investment.
Even the public interest in selecting a strategic investment should be assessed according to; the value of the investment, the time of realization, regional and local economic development, the creation of new jobs, productivity and its added value.
To ease business costs, investors in the resort sector in tourist areas, the Investment Council headed by the Prime Minister could provide not only access to public assets, without competition, but also public services because the investment in exchange for the competitive advantage created by the transfer of property and public services would provide multiple benefits for the local and national economy.
What has the government offered in these 10 years?
According to the approved decisions, the government has offered investors over 5.8 km² of agricultural land and land mainly in the valuable southern coastal area, through 1 euro lease contracts.
Investors who have qualified to make investments in tourism have benefited not only from land in coastal areas, but the government has guaranteed them through budget funds direct infrastructure as well as auxiliary infrastructure, such as water supply, sewage, secondary roads, as well as investments in energy distribution by adapting the depreciated network, and other benefits.
From the calculations it is concluded that every year in the last decade, up to 400 million Euros have been directly invested from the state budget (with domestic funds) in tourist areas to facilitate the costs and businesses of investors in the resort sector, so a total of about 3.2 billion euros from our taxes.
But let's see what the strategic investments have given back?
So while they have received 5.8km2 of land and about 3.2 billion euros from the state budget to facilitate strategic investments, AIDA proudly declares that the value of strategic investments is 4.4 billion euros. AIDA also declares that strategic investments in tourism have brought an additional 25,040 employees in the tourism sector.
But, if we refer to the World Bank's sectoral analysis of the effect that investments in tourism have on the creation of new jobs, it results that for every 10 million euros of investments in tourism, up to 130 direct jobs and 60 indirect jobs should have been created. So these 4.4 billion euros should have brought at least 57 thousand new jobs directly in tourism and 36 thousand indirect jobs from sectors related to tourism (agriculture, transport, culture, etc.)
Since all strategic investments 75%-85% have been the construction of individual private residences with little mix of TOURIST structures, they have not passed the much-publicized test of creating new, much-needed jobs.
But the insufficiency to produce well-being for residents of coastal areas does not end here, On the other hand, another law approved during 2020, the law "On the integrated management of coastal areas" further damages the interests of residents and property owners on the coast. This law deprives coastal landowners of the right to sell or freely develop their lands by giving the state the right of pre-emption of any private land on the coast or by forcing the owners that their development can only be done with PPP contracts or as a strategic investment. The law brutally interferes with the will of the landowner on the coast, forcing him to sell the property first to the state, which then gives it to the private sector at a predetermined price and not at the value determined on the market, expropriating residents at ridiculous values.
But the resort economy and strategic investments, in addition to not bringing direct benefits, have been accompanied by costs at the expense of other sectors of the economy. Other sectors, mainly agriculture, which should be growing at the same pace as tourism, are in a dive. The production of agricultural products and by-products (except fish, eggs and honey) has only decreased since 2020, giving a strong signal of the instability created by the resort tourism economy, which has expanded the market for imported products, reducing the market for domestic production. Albania's trade deficit has reached record levels, reaching around 5.2 billion euros. This deep gap is a consequence of the massive influx of foreign goods.
The Strategic Investment Law and other legal and sub-legal acts adopted in the past 10 years to manage the sale of coastal land are nothing more than one-sided incentive structures for the “legal” transfer of value from the public and ordinary citizens to a certain group of people who, not surprisingly, are also beneficiaries of other public contracts. Although this transfer was supposedly made in the name of creating additional values, or jobs, this has not happened.
The data of 4.4 billion current investments in tourist "resorts" except Taulant who explains "thick and thick" does not leave anyone with two brains in their heads to believe that another 4 billion will bring development. This economic model neither builds productive capital nor develops. It has created a two-tier society: a small elite that controls real estate which benefited from the transfer of public wealth without competition, and from the forced transfer of private wealth, and a broad mass that must be content with cleaning and serving .... if they want more they must emigrate

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