Business sector in Albania expresses its concern about the growth of informal borrowing from businesses. They suggest that this borrowing is a direct result of stringent lending policies applied by second level banks in the country.
General Administrator of “Konfindustria”, Gjergj Buxhuku (photo) spoke to IBNA about this concern and said that he bases his opinion on the comparative information received by this organization.
Albania is ranked as one of the countries with the highest loan interest rates and the strictest conditions for loans in Southeast Europe, without mentioning EU countries. Industry and production in general are the most affected part of the national economy by the stringent policies of lending from the banking sector.
A direct indicator of this situation is the pace of the growth of lending for the economy. For the first quarter of 2014, lending for businesses saw an all time low even as opposed to the difficult year 2013.
On the other hand, there’s also a significant fall in imports for machinery and equipment.
Buxhuku says that a direct impact of these lending policies from the Albanian banking sector is the fall of the competitive capacity of products and services Made in Albania, as opposed to foreign ones.