|
Albania
FOREIGN ECONOMIC RELATIONS
Enver Hoxha's regime had maintained a legal stranglehold on the
country's foreign commerce since World War II through state-run
trading enterprises. For decades Albania had maintained no representative
commercial offices in Western countries, and so deep was the Albanian
dictator's animus toward the Soviet Union that the two countries
carried on no trade at all for decades after their split in the
early 1960s. Hoxha and his protégés created a formidable barrier
to economic relations with the West in 1976 by incorporating into
the country's constitution an amendment banning borrowing from
capitalist countries. Trade with the West increased after Hoxha's
death in 1985, but it was not until the end of the decade that
Albania's government surrendered its monopoly on foreign trade.
Lawlessness and graft soon made a mockery of almost all legal
controls on foreign transactions. In mid-1991 the government was
working to set up a free-market-based foreign trade system. After
more than a decade of "self-reliance," during which balanced trade
had been an essential element of Hoxha's economic doctrine, the
country's economic collapse forced its foreign-trade balance and
balance of payments deeply into the red. Albanians had to rely
on outside aid just to feed themselves.
Data as of April 1992
|
