Global Power Structures
A Country in Descent
Since 2013, the government of Edi Rama has steered Albania into a structural decline. Thirteen years should be enough to stabilize an economy, strengthen institutions, and deliver visible development. Instead, the country moves downward with the predictability of an aircraft on autopilot. Citizens sit in the back of the cabin, unable to influence the direction, reassured only by a democracy that imitates legitimacy but produces no progress.
This reality raises a direct question. Does the government lack economic competence, or does it follow a deliberate political logic? And if it follows a deliberate logic, whose interests does this model serve? A decade in power gives any government enough time to transform a country—or to keep it dependent.
The European Union reinforces the illusion of progress by promoting 2027 as a potential accession date. The promise signals stability, even as Albania’s economic structure weakens year after year. International data exposes the gap between appearance and reality. The World Bank records modest growth driven mainly by remittances rather than domestic production (World Bank, Remittances as % of GDP), while the Albanian Institute of Statistics (INSTAT) reports an annual trade deficit of –4.29 billion USD. The pattern is unmistakable: Albania produces too little, imports too much, and relies on income earned abroad. The country extracts the resources while Europe captures the value. A model that exports raw materials cheaply and imports finished goods at high prices cannot build national development; it strengthens foreign industries and locks the country at the bottom of the value chain. When a government maintains such a model for more than a decade, the question of whose interests it serves becomes unavoidable, because it certainly does not serve the population, which carries the losses while others collect the gains.
A Rich Country Kept Poor
Albania holds valuable resources: chromium, copper, nickel, oil, fertile land, and water. Yet companies ship these resources out of the country in their lowest-value form—raw and barely processed.
Extraction does not create value; only processing, refinement, and industrial transformation do. Without domestic processing, a country remains at the bottom of the value chain, where profits stay small and development never takes off.
Albania exports raw materials and imports finished goods, a pattern that drains value creation, blocks productive capacity, and prevents the emergence of industrial sectors (OEC, Albania Export & Import Profile). This is not development; it is a mechanism that systematically reproduces dependency.
Why Albania Stays Poor—and Saudi Arabia Does Not
Exporting raw materials does not decide whether a country becomes rich or poor. Saudi Arabia also exports raw materials—but under entirely different conditions.
Saudi Arabia controls the full chain of value creation—from refineries and petrochemicals to energy industries and sovereign wealth funds—allowing it to export both crude oil and refined products while reinvesting its profits in infrastructure, technology, and global assets.
Albania follows the opposite path. It exports low‑value raw materials and imports high‑value finished goods. Foreign industries generate the profit, not Albania.
Saudi Arabia grows wealthy despite tourism.
Albania stays poor because it treats tourism as a substitute for industry.
The Tourism Myth
The government presents tourism as a national strategy. But tourism complements an economy; it does not anchor one. It creates seasonal jobs, low wages, and high import dependency. It does not build an industrial base, technological capacity, or export goods.
A hotel consumes. A factory produces.
Consumption brings short‑term revenue. Production creates long‑term wealth. GDP measures activity, but prosperity grows only when a country exports value instead of importing it. A trade deficit reveals an economy that produces too little and consumes too much—and Albania embodies this structural imbalance.
The billion‑dollar hotel project on Sazan Island, financed by Qatar and investors linked to the Trump orbit, illustrates the pattern. Capital flows to places where investors expect quick returns, not long‑term value creation.
No country has built prosperity through hotels.
The Myth of Capitalism
Many Albanians hear that the state cannot create companies or provide jobs, and that individuals must “invest on their own.” This belief confuses capitalism with state absence.
Capitalism requires the state to create structural conditions. Only when the state guarantees these foundations can private enterprise emerge, grow, and invest.
Countries like Germany, South Korea, the United States, Japan, France, and Singapore did not leave their industries to chance; they built them by guaranteeing legal security, stable energy supply, functioning courts, infrastructure, education, investment incentives, and corruption control. Without these foundations, neither citizens nor foreign investors commit capital. Albania, by contrast, demands entrepreneurial behavior from its citizens while refusing to create the conditions that make entrepreneurship possible. It offers capitalism without a foundation, a market without structure, and competition without rules. As long as the state avoids building the conditions for production, the outcome remains the same: companies ship out raw materials, and no industry emerges.
This is not a political opinion. It follows economic logic.
The Political Logic Behind Albania’s Economic Weakness
Albania does not lack wealth; political decisions keep it poor by blocking value creation and reinforcing a model that exports raw materials, imports value, and strengthens external interests at the expense of the population. The mechanism is simple: a country that exports only raw materials loses capital, knowledge, jobs, and its future, because without production, no sectors rise, innovation stalls, and economic independence never emerges. Albania’s weakness, therefore, does not arise from the competence of individual ministers but from a political logic that rewards short‑term gains, secures loyalty, and reproduces dependency, while powerful actors sustain the old colonial narrative that Southeastern countries cannot build modern economies—even though history consistently disproves it. South Korea, Singapore, Estonia, and Finland all transformed themselves through political decisions, institutional reform, and industrial strategy, not through geography or cultural destiny. Albania remains weak for the same reason: not because the region lacks capacity, but because the political model refuses to build production, avoids industrial development, and prioritizes extraction over transformation. Those who profit from cheap resources, political control, and structural dependency have no incentive to change it, and the model endures as long as their interests outweigh the will for economic transformation.
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