Eastern Europe’s Bright Economic Future

Albania, with EU help is making moves toward spreading affluence out from the capital and other economically strong areas to some of the more impoverished areas in the country. But the moves Albania is making are set to make a big difference to some of Albania’s neighbours, spreading affluence throughout the region.

For a start Kosovo has just declared its independence, a move that proved incredibly successful for Montenegro’s economy, and is now set to do the same for Kosovo’s with talk of NATO membership already on the cards.

Albania’s government is keen to forge strong ties with its neighbours it seems, and this is likely to be economically beneficial to all parties who take part, as well as opening up new areas of Albania, and possibly neighbouring countries to international property investors.

This new environment of integration is already beginning to form: A €600m ($932m) project to upgrade the road from the port of Durres on the Adriatic to the border with Kosovo underscores the new relationship. The Enka group of Turkey and Bechtel of the US are building a 70km section of highway, widening the existing road and forging a series of tunnels through the mountains. The new roads will make travel from Duress to the Kosovar capital Pristina possible in 3 hours, a journey that currently takes closer to 10 hours.

This will open up virgin and currently impoverished parts of northern Albania to property development and tourism, as well as giving Kosovo, and hopefully Serbia eventually, easier access to export from Albania’s largest port at Duress.

Between the new road and the current expansion of the Duress port thanks to another massive loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, there are currently a lot of reasons to be very hopeful of a bright economic future for Albania and Eastern Europe as a whole.