TIRANA – The public private partnerships (PPP) have become again a target of criticism of the opposition Democratic Party (DP) considering them as abusive contracts of the Socialist Party -led government with its clients to the detriment of Albania’s economy.
A senior DP official, an economic expert, Florjon Mima launched an appeal to the Prime Minister, Edi Rama to cancel the PPPs which, as he said, had no value for Albanians.
“The economy of the country and the lives of Albanians are more important than some abusive worthless contracts for the people as these deals have devoured lion’s share of the budget,” said Mima, former deputy Finance Minister when DP was in power. He pointed out that it was better to cancel them rather than lead Albania to further poverty. Mima called them as unnecessary PPPs approved by PM Rama and asked from him to cancel them than let poverty plague the country.
In a comment on government’s second financial supportive package Mima said that the so-called war salary is not adequate for small and big businesses’ Albanian workers. In his opinion, the amount of the salary from 26,000 to 40,000 leks is an insult to the dignity of those who have contributed to the Albanian economy for 30 years.
In the meantime data released by the Institute of Statistic (INSTAT) reveal that the number of unemployed until April 20 has reached 221,000, an increase of 37% compared to the end of 2019, in Albania. According to INSTAT there were about 160,000 unemployed people in the country at the end of 2019.
The main cause of such an increase of the unemployment is the pandemic because thousands of small business employees were fired due to the closure of businesses. /argumentum.al
