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Albania
Dependence on Yugoslavia, 1945-48
After World War II, just as before, Albania's economy relied
heavily on foreign assistance. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration granted Albania US$26.3 million in aid during 1945
and 1946, including large amounts of seed and enough grain to
feed a third of the population in 1945; the United States supplied
US$20.4 million of the United Nations relief. In July 1946, Albania
and Yugoslavia signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation,
which provided for establishment of an agency that would coordinate
the two countries' economic plans. The agreement also called for
the creation of a customs union and the standardization of the
Albanian and Yugoslav monetary and pricing systems. A series of
technical and economic agreements soon followed. In November,
Tiranė and Belgrade signed an economic cooperation accord and
an agreement on the creation of jointly owned companies. At least
on paper, these documents transformed Albania into a Yugoslav
satellite; but their implementation quickly ran into snags.
In early 1947, Tiranė began voicing serious objections to the
economic arrangements with Belgrade, taking exception to the way
the Yugoslavs weighed Albanian investment in the jointly owned
companies and calculated the value of Albanian exports of raw
material to Yugoslavia. The Albanians also charged that Yugoslavia's
shipping enterprise was working to usurp control of their country's
foreign trade. Tiranė sought investment funds to develop light
industries and an oil refinery; Belgrade wanted the Albanians
to concentrate on agriculture and the extraction of raw materials.
Despite its objections to the economic relationship with Yugoslavia,
in early 1948 Tiranė launched a one-year economic plan designed
to bring Albania's economy into step with Yugoslavia's. But Albania
abruptly cut economic links with its neighbor after the Soviet
Union expelled Yugoslavia from the Cominform (see Glossary) in
June.
Data as of April 1992
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