Ministry of Transport, Information Technology and Communications

The 5^th session of the Joint Bulgarian-Albanian Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation was held on March, 24-25, 2011 in Sofia. The session protocol and the resolutions of the Committee were signed by the Minister of Transport, Information Technology and Communications Aleksandar Tsvetkov, Co-chairman from Bulgarian side and the Deputy Minister of the Interior of Albania, Selim Belortaja.

The trade and economic relations between Bulgaria and Albania are traditionally good. There are not open and contestable issues between the two countries. The low transport expenditures, the competitive prices and the quality of the Bulgarian goods in accordance with the requirements of the Albanian market create favourable conditions for the economic and commercial relations between both countries, said Aleksandar Tsvetkov.

The Commission noted that there was a significant potential for activating of the bilateral cooperation in different areas, especially in the area of agriculture, transport, infrastructure projects, energetics, information technology, pharamaceutics, production of foodstuffs and wines.

It was marked that although the positive trend in the development of the bilateral trade relations, the difficulties caused by the economic crisis reflected unfavourable on them during the past year. With regard to this the Committee recommended strengthened activity of the experts in the sphere ministries, in order to improve the frame conditions for development of the business relations, as well as the enterprises to search more flexible opportunities for appearing on the markets of both countries. This would contribute to the increase of the trade volume, which in the present moment does not show the real potential of the two countries.

The participants in the Committee shared the opinion that the signed protocol would contribute for going deep of the future cooperation in which the directions and its specific forms were set.