ISSN: 2560-1601 Vol. 23, No. 4 (Al) Nov 2019 Albania external relations briefing: Second CIIE and Albania’s position Marsela Musabelliu 1052 Budapest Petőfi Sándor utca 11. +36 1 5858 690 Kiadó: Kína-KKE Intézet Nonprofit Kft.
[email protected] Szerkesztésért felelős személy: Chen Xin Kiadásért felelős személy: Huang Ping china-cee.eu 2017/01 Second CIIE and Albania’s position Introduction Albanian business circles are very diligent when selecting and attending exhibitions and trade fairs. Being a country that imports much more than exports, the main target of the country’s entrepreneurs has been export exhibitions all around the world, however, this trend is has started to shift since some Albanian businesses started to flourish in local production. This trend developed mainly at the start of the new millennium when after a decade of open economy, Albanians realized that there were opportunities of local production in a multitude of areas and the most resilient of them started capitalizing on the Albania’s most important comparative advantages: low labor cost and untapped natural resources. The initial Albanian exports were targeting neighboring countries of the Balkans, Turkey, Italy and Germany, in short, countries with which Albanian enterprises were familiar with. Later on, Albanian-made products could be found in North and South America, Russia, Scandinavian countries and so on. For years People’s Republic of China has been perceived from Albanian enterprises exclusively as a market to import from, in fact Chinese commodities have an overwhelming presence in the country’s households, industrial settings, apparel stores and many more.