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Albania
Black Market
The food shortage, price controls on staple items, and the ease
with which foreign food aid could be diverted from normal distribution
channels produced ideal conditions for a brisk black market. Basic
food items, which officially still had governmentfixed prices,
became difficult, and often impossible, to purchase at stores
but appeared at significantly higher prices on the black market
alongside items pilfered from aid consignments. Nonfood items
looted from warehouses were available from black-market dealers
at many times normal prices. Fines for trafficking in smuggled
and stolen goods were trivial compared to the potential profits.
Data as of April 1992
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