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Albania
AGRICULTURE
The Albanian economy's
traditional mainstay, agriculture generated a third of the country's
net material product and employed more than half the work force
in 1990. Domestic farm products accounted for 63 percent of household
expenditures and 25 percent of exports in that year. While striving
for self-sufficiency in the 1970s and 1980s, the Enver Hoxha regime
created the world's most strictly controlled and isolated farm
sector. But as the government force-fed investment funds to industry
at the farm sector's expense, food output fell short of the needs
of the rapidly increasing population. The government triggered
acute disruptions in food supplies by reducing the size of personal
plots, collectivizing livestock, and forbidding peasants to market
their produce privately. By the early 1990s, the country's farms
were no longer supplying adequate amounts of food to urban areas;
they were also failing to meet the needs of Albanian factories
for raw materials. The regime responded by stimulating agricultural
production through a program of land privatization and free-market
measures, cognizant that the success of its broader economic reform
program depended heavily on the agricultural sector's ability
to feed the population and provide the input-starved production
lines with raw materials.
Data as of April 1992
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