WIIW The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies - Wiener Institut für Internationale Wirtschaftsvergleiche

For Albania, we expect GDP growth of 1.9% in 2011 and 2.2% in 2012 respectively and a stronger increase to 2.6% in 2013 and 3.4% in 2014, the latter due to the election cycle and induced populist government spending. The assumption is that the government has no problems financing fiscal expansion, that heavy rainfall in early 2012 will bring the vital electricity production back to normal and that export growth will continue despite the eurozone crisis (also with the help of further increasing crude oil export production capacities); remittances will tend to stabilize or at least fall at a slower pace as further unemployment in Greece might rather hit the public sector, where Albanians are not employed. Obviously, the risks are on the downside, very much so.