Investment projects - Their role in the sustainable economic development

Characteristic of “sustainable development” is in the “recognition” of the environment as an element, outside of which cannot be thought of overall development of a society. In this article will be treated the rehabilitation project of salt production in Vlore which is the only activity of this type in Albania and the largest in the Balkans. The industry of salt Production in Vlore is part of one of the branches of industry that can contribute in an important way in the national production and in the improvement of the balance of imports-exports. This project is done for two reasons: 1. Technologies used in Albania are of a very old level 2. The current productivity is very low compared with the industrialized countries. This investment project apart from the impact to a sustainable development for the area it also presents a series of other values such as: - Saline can provide water surface which are important for the moderation of climate and air quality. - In the period of their return to their previous conditions they can turn into Lagoons of great value; - Saline serve as a tool for the regulation of flooding in the area in which they are located

The Greek crisis effects on the Albanian economy

The study of the effects of the crisis of Greece has a special significance for two reasons: The first the large number of Albanian immigrants in Greece, and second is the fact that Greek investments are in sectors of economy. The first part of the analysis has to do with the effects of immigrants on the Greek crisis, collapse of economic growth in Greece, increased unemployment and poverty, which affects the emigrants. The second part of the analysis is the impact of the crisis in the Greek banking system, which is analyzed in several aspects: the safety of deposits, the credit of the Albanian economy and the investment banking sector. The third part of the analysis concerns the reduction of foreign direct investment. Reduction of Greek investments in the banking and telecommunications will grow negative effects

ISSUES RELATING TO LENDING ACTIVITY IN ALBANIAN BANKING SECTOR

The banking sector in Albania is among the most developed sectors of the Albanian economy and one of the few, whose development can be compared to that of other countries of the world. With the recent financial crisis of 2008 the world economy suffered a heavy blow, especially with regard to the global financial systems. Albania, although with no immediate consequences of this crisis by being less exposed to the international financial markets, has started to show problems in its development rates. One of the main problems of the Albanian economy, especially in recent years, is the high rate of non-performing loans in the Albanian economy. Following 2008 this indicator has seen a large increase making today Albania a country with the highest non-performing loans rate in region. The article is aimed at providing a detailed analysis on the problems encountered in Albania regarding private borrowing as well as at making a comparison with other countries in the region. This goal will be achieved by analyzing the banks' lending activity through a questionnaire addressed to the second-tier banks operating in Albania. This questionnaire shall help to make an assessment of monetary and economic development of the country, following the collection of certain data on some key issues of the lending process, such as loan approval standards, terms of lending to businesses and individuals, trends in demand for loans, et

An Intelligent Market: Possibilities of a Revolution in Supermarkets Organization Using Agent Based Systems

This work is focused on studying the possibilities of a new model in business management, integrating the best solutions of IT in the supermarket enterprises. We aim to show how an agent based system is used to manage successfully a market and why it is considered an efficient method to support the challenges of the supermarket enterprises. In a highly competitive environment, the impact of this phenomenon is visible, noting the increase of the interest for electronic systems which offer intelligent services in some activities as administration, marketing, business services, etc. We think agent based systems are the best choice as tools that can automate the analysis of the database information and locate the real useful things

Artificial neural networks in forecasting tourists’ flow, an intelligent technique to help the economic development of tourism in Albania

Tourism plays an important role in many economies and contributes greatly to the Gross Domestic Product. In the past eight years, the number of tourist arrivals in Albania has increased rapidly, which resulted in increasing the number of tourist nights and revenue from tourism. Tourism also provides new sources of income for the country, without having that local citizen to pay more taxes. This can be achieved by income from parking, tourist taxes, leased apartments, sales information, etc. Early prediction on the tourist inflow mainly focuses on econometric models that have as a main feature the tourism demand being predicted by analysing factors that affect the tourists’ inflow. This approach results in being difficult, time-consuming and also expensive to determine econometric models. Traditional time series methods, such as exponential smoothing method, grey prediction method, linear regression method, ARIMA method etc., are more appropriate for the prediction of the tourist inflow. However, since they don’t apply a learning process on sample data, it is difficult for them to realize complicated and non-linear prediction on tourist inflow. The aim of this paper is to present the neural network usage in the tourists’ number forecasting and to determine the trends of the future tourist inflow, thus helping tourism management agencies in making scientific based financial decisions