More than two months after the June 23 general elections won by the Socialist-led coalition, Albania’s President Bujar Nishani officially named Socialist Party leader Edi Rama as the country’s new Prime Minister, giving him the mandate to form a new cabinet. On September 15 the parliament voted in the new government that has pledged to fight poverty and unemployment, kickstart the economy and lead the country closer to EU membership.

On the macroeconomic front, the statistics office said consumer prices in the country
grew by 1.2% year on year in August 2013, slowing down for the second consecutive month, with the overall trend again determined by food prices. Producer prices declined by 0.5% year on year in the second quarter of 2013, reversing from a 0.2% year on year rise in the previous quarter. The unemployment rate stayed at 12.8% in Q2 of 2013, unchanged from the previous three quarters.

Albania’s general government deficit expanded by 128.5% in the first seven months of 2013 as revenue fell while expenditure increased. The gap accounted for 3.3% of the projected full-year GDP, up from 1.6% a year earlier.The government targets to narrow the budget gap to 3.4% of the GDP in 2013 from 3% in 2012 and for the purpose it approved a set of restrictive measures including freezing of public procurement and investments, which after July 15 are implemented only through a special decision of the cabinet. In addition, the government reduced the expenditure on administrative services by 20%.