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Albania
Foreign Trade Balance and Balance of Payments
After more than a decade of autarky and trade surpluses, the
force of Albania's economic collapse pulled the country's foreign-trade
balance and balance of payments into the red. Albania's exports
slipped more than 50 percent to about US$120 million in the early
1990s, and the influx of emergency food and commodity aid contributed
almost half of a 20-percent increase in imports. In 1991 Albania's
external current-accounts deficit, excluding official transfers,
widened to more than US$250 million, which equaled about 30 percent
of the country's GDP before the economy seized up. In an effort
to narrow the gap, the authorities practically depleted Albania's
meager foreign-currency reserves. In the late 1980s, the government
began ignoring the constitutional ban on foreign credits, and
by mid-1991 the country's total convertible-currency debt was
soaring toward US$400 million. Shortfalls in the output of electric
power, minerals, and other goods set off another significant slide
in export earnings. Officials hoped remittances from the thousands
of Albanians who had fled to Greece and Italy would help return
Albania's balance of payments to an even keel, but in the early
1990s these émigrés were mostly sending home hard goods, such
as used cars, unavailable in the homeland.
Data as of April 1992
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