Information technology, innovation, and their impact on the country’s economic development were the focus of a meeting held today with representatives of the construction sector at the “NEST” Innovation and Technology Center — a structure of the Albanian Development Fund that also serves universities and enterprises. The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Edi Rama and the Minister of State for Entrepreneurship and Business Climate, Delina Ibrahimaj.
During the meeting, a group of young Albanian entrepreneurs presented a start-up focused on financing the construction sector.
In her opening remarks, Minister Ibrahimaj emphasized: “The government has a clear vision that only through innovation and digitalization will the Albanian economy continue to develop.”
She further highlighted that information technology is now integrated into every governmental process — from service delivery to daily operations.
“We planned this joint meeting with builders to discuss information technology and innovation — specifically how core and essential sectors in the country’s economic development can benefit from technological advancements. Whether through improving work processes or through new financing platforms, both elements are fundamental for your growth,” said Minister Ibrahimaj.
“As a government, we have a clear vision: innovation and digitalization are the only paths forward for Albania’s economic development. When it comes to innovation and its use in government, we’ve already shown that information technology is embedded in every process of our work, in delivering services and in our daily tasks.”
She stressed that it is essential for the private sector to expand its use of innovation in its services: “Despite the advancements and benefits innovation has brought to government services, we see that the private sector uses it much less. We believe there is significant potential to increase productivity, improve efficiency, and reduce costs.”
Furthermore, Minister Ibrahimaj underlined that the time has come for financing to move beyond traditional lending: “We strongly believe that financing should no longer rely solely on credit. The banking sector should not be the only instrument used by the construction industry to secure funds. The world has already started using new financing tools through advanced technologies such as blockchain.
Through these tools and the linkage of your assets or real estate projects — whether in tourism or commercial centers — you can attract funding from global institutional investors, who are increasingly interested in investing in Albania. These investors are not necessarily looking to fund entire projects but are also open to participating in parts or phases of projects,” Minister Ibrahimaj stated.
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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Let me say a couple of things because it’s important to explain why we gathered here today with the representatives of this start-up. After we got acquainted with their work and with the great potential that their work holds for the entire construction sector in a previous meeting we held with the innovation community, we thought to help make this presentation so that all of you become aware of the fact that even here in Tirana you have a door you can knock on and a group you can talk to for cooperation in the function of project financing.
In the meantime, we have had in recent times several funds interested — this is not the first — but what makes this team specific is that it is a team here in Albania and doing this work from Albania.
Whereas, other funds from the United States, or from the United Kingdom, or from Germany have come before and expressed interest in investing large amounts in the field of construction, also due to the high interest that Albania enjoys today and due to many movements happening overall in terms of the needs of various professional categories throughout Europe or around Europe, looking to relocate to safe and stable places.
Projects with foreign architects have sparked great international interest, which now has started to expand into the field of investors. It is no longer just a cultural interest or merely an interest of the global community of contemporary architects, but it is becoming an investor interest.
However, on one hand, there is the credibility of the architects, but on the other hand, there is the credibility of the project itself to be realized just as it was envisioned by the architect, and not to get the permit based on the architect’s project and then end up with a finished building that even the architect himself no longer recognizes as his own. And this is a problem we have today.
Here, of course, it is our duty to address this issue through new legal measures, which will include the architect as the guarantor of the project, who will bear both moral and legal responsibility for the project’s realization.
In a way, even this investment formula explained here is a kind of pre-sale, but a pre-sale based on the guarantee of the investment the fact that you immediately have liquidity available to proceed, without engaging and without involving people, but instead engaging financing. So, in fact, you are covered financially, and this can increase the value of your final product.
Institutional investors want time certainty they want to know the timeline. You can’t give them a project for a building in Tirana and then have that project take ten years to complete. That doesn’t work. They want to know when it starts, when it ends, and what capacity exists to start and finish it on time. Time is very important.
Naturally, there are other factors involved here, such as the construction capacity of companies, the qualified labor force which you know has become very valuable and growing demands. And for this, we must look at the possibility of creating synergies with international companies, even in construction, to earn overtime
what is otherwise lost through unreasonable project delays.
From our side, it is very important that this new foundation we have created with this network of international architects — a concentration that no other country has, this is the truth, and it becomes the base for a new development in all aspects. Because, as anyone who has worked with them knows, it’s not just about choosing this architect over that one, but it’s about introducing a completely different culture of seeing things, a totally different work culture from what is learned in their absence, an extraordinary school for all our local architects.
Working with these masters, they learn the craft not from school benches, and not by practicing Photoshop drawings that make everyone feel like a great architect but by working in real time on real projects. Going for an internship at one of these architect studios is impossible. It’s every European and American student’s dream to do an internship there.
Meanwhile, we’ve created the conditions so that all our local architect studios can undergo a real internship, in real time. And I am convinced that from what’s happening now, within the next 5–10 years, Albania will certainly have one or two big names in global architecture. Because Albania has many talents — but our architecture school is not, among the best in Europe. And even if it were, what one learns through daily practice working with investors, with builders, with projects of this scale and ambition can never be learned at school or without this big chance of working with people and teams of this caliber.
If we manage to realize these projects faithfully, Albania will become one of the most important destinations in Europe for architectural tourism. One building changed Bilbao’s entire economy. If we manage to implement these projects that are now in process, it will be something extraordinary for our culture, for our heritage, and for our economy.
We’ve seen several funds that have come here talking about numbers from 100 million, 500 million, up to 1 billion, 2 billion, 3 billion — ready to invest in different forms, co-financing, and in cooperation with our investors and builders. But what has prevented us from encouraging them to act immediately has been the great fear that the two fundamental conditions for these funds, time and quality won’t be met. And if they’re not met, one major failure is enough to scare these funds away from Albania for the next 20 years.
That’s why we wanted to move slowly. And now I want to inform you that we have started — and this year we will go further and in the next 2–3 years we will make our participation in large real estate fairs and expos much more intensive: to present the projects, to present potential investments, to present investors — meaning you — to other interested parties. But on the other hand, all of this requires guarantees. The guarantee is the faithful realization of the projects. And that’s why we will do everything we can to build from our side a new plan for repressive measures that will balance the support and all the new channels we will try to open for you and for the construction industry.
So, all those steps that were presented here are steps that we need to legally foresee, including guarantees for permits, including a “blacklist” of builders who do not follow the rules and who will be banned from obtaining permits and many other things that the world already has, and that we now need to implement. Meanwhile, of course, we’ll also look at anything that makes your work easier and what we’re doing today is precisely one of the things that can help ease your work.
In closing, I’d suggest that after the meeting you look at the building here, to see some things that may be useful to you. We’re going to make it mandatory that construction sites have cameras and are monitored 24/7. This will help you follow the work, of course, but it’s also very valuable for all aspects related to safety and ensuring the integrity of the project. Somewhere in one of the rooms here, you’ll see that through an AI-powered monitoring system, a site can be followed remotely and even the accuracy of the work in relation to the project can be tracked — not just the perimeter.
We’re also finalizing the monitoring center with drones integrated with satellite data, and that too will allow us to monitor all developments in the territory in real time. But I would suggest you observe some of the things done in this building, so you understand the need for your companies, and I believe here are mostly large companies engaged in a team for research and innovation. It’s necessary. It may seem like a waste of money, but it’s more valuable than anything else.
And we will make it mandatory for all companies with more than 100 employees to have an innovative department that deals with the entire technological aspect, and this will undoubtedly serve every company better and prepare us for what lies ahead in the private business sector when we join the European Union.
Thank you very much for your attention and for attending this meeting!
