Albania

Economy

Imports
$7.59 billion (2021).  Refined Petroleum ($602M), Cars ($227M), Packaged Medicaments ($214M), Electricity ($203M), and Raw Iron Bars ($166M), importing mostly from Italy ($1.91B), Greece ($1.62B), Turkey ($790M), China ($586M), and Germany ($359M).

Financial inclusion factors (over 15 years of  age)
• 8% have an account with a financial institution
• 1.1% have a credit card
• 2.4% have a mobile money account
• 7.3% make online purchases

Ease of doing business
It is easy to conduct business (rated 67.7 out of 100) ranked 21st out of 44 European and Central Asian countries ranked 82nd out of 190 countries worldwide (2020, World Bank).

Exports
$3.49 billion (2021). Footwear Parts ($272M), Leather Footwear ($254M), Electricity ($204M), Crude Petroleum ($204M), and Ferroalloys ($157M), exporting mostly to Italy ($1.42B), Greece ($441M), Spain ($211M), Germany ($174M), and China ($149M).

Economic freedom
‘Moderately free’ (rated 65.3 out of 100) ranked 27th out of 44 European countries ranked 49th out of 186 countries worldwide (2023, Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal).

Media

Media language
English, Albanian

The press

Shekulli – private daily
Gazeta Shqiptare – private daily
Panorama – private daily
Gazeta Dita – private daily
Gazeta Mapo – private daily
Tirana Times – English-language

Television

Albanian Radio and TV (RTSh) – public, operates two networks
Top Channel – national, private
TV Klan – national, private
Vizion Plus – national, private

Radio

Albanian Radio and TV (RTSh) – public
Top Albania Radio – national, private
Club FM – national, private

News agency

Albanian Telegraphic Agency (ATA) – English-language pages
BalkanWeb – news website
NOA – news website
Albanian Daily News – English-language news site

Internet Data

Internet users
80.1 % penetration, 2.27 million

Share of web traffic by device
86.18% mobile phones, 13.01% computers (laptops and desktops), 0.80% tablet devices and 0.01% other devices

Median speed of mobile Internet connection
44.63 mbps

Median speed of fixed Internet connection
39.29 mbps

Mobile connection as a percentage of total population: 122.2%

Percentage of mobile connections that are broadband (3G-5G): 73.4%

Most popular web search engines
Google (98.12%), Bing (0.95%), Yahoo (0.56%), DuckDuckgo (0.17%), Yandex (0.15%), Ecosia (0.03%)

Most used social media
Facebook (94.78%), Instagram (2.99%), Pinterest (0.84%), Twitter (0.82%), YouTube (0.36%), Reddit (0.11%)

Social statistics

Life expectancy
76 yrs (2021)

Average age of the population
36.4 yrs (2020)

Current education expenditure
88.6% of total expenditure in public institutions

World Happiness Index
Albania was ranked 90 out of 137 countries, with a score of 5.199

The World Happiness Index measures happiness based on respondent ratings of their own lives, correlated with other life factors.

Privileges: It is obvious that if personal relationships carry excessive weight (e.g. preferred treatment, pay increases, hiring of friends or family) misunderstanding of business or job relations can occur. Usually, such situations do not occur and having family members in the same workplace is not a common thing; you see this only in small, private businesses.

CO2 emissions
1.7 metric tons per capita

Current Health Expenditure
6.66%

Corruption Perception Index
Albania scored 36 out of 100, ranked 101 out of 180 countries

The CPI measures the perception of corruption due to the difficulty of measuring absolute levels of corruption.

Religion
In general, the Albanian person is not religious and at the same time does not judge other people with religious convictions. For them, faith is a personal matter and is not taught at home. It is common to see marriages of people with different religious names or backgrounds. The characteristic element of Albanian history is the peaceful co-existence of different religions. Albanians do not harass people due to their class, origin, or ethnicity. The attitudes regarding gender, religion, class, and ethnicity do not have any impact on the workplace, where endeavor through productivity, teamwork, and respect are the leading values..

Gender
Albanian people regard both men and women equally. It is common to see men and women in all workplaces, but men carry out the hard professions. Men lead the family and the women strive to keep a clean house, and a warm home, and together with their husbands, they look after their children with great attention.