Albania slows after post-earthquake reconstruction boom

Albania could look like an attractive investment pool for Italian ceramic manufacturers after the earthquake that struck the country in 2019, causing the destruction of most buildings in the northern part of the nation.

A disaster that has prompted the acceleration of the construction sector to rebuild properties in the area, becoming a dynamic and promising market. 

Opening up further opportunities in the Albanian market is the renewed commitment of the Meloni government to "work on the competitive advantage of quality and brand Italy" expressed during the first table on industrial policies. Indeed, the government's goal is to boost Made in Italy exports especially to the Balkans, through Albania, a bridge between Italy and the Balkans.

The acceleration is certainly supported by the strong reconstruction grants from the European Union, including Italy. In fact, official data from the Albanian National Institute of Statistics show that permits for the construction of buildings, both residential and non-residential, are growing sharply in 2021, surpassing the previous year's numbers by 45 percent. 

This dynamic is reflected in the nearly 17 percent increase in ceramic tile consumption recorded in Albania in 2021 as recounted in the report "World production and consumption of ceramic tiles" by the Mecs Study Center. 

However, analyzing the forecast data of the report "Ceramic tile market forecast analysis - Trend 2022-2026," the reconstruction-related growth is not likely to last in the long term: in fact, a -3.4 percent decline between now and 2026 is expected in the country's tile consumption, with a realignment to the pre-earthquake dynamics and thus to previous demand volumes. 

 The reason behind this trend is clear: an unstoppable decline in fact has been affecting the Albanian population since 2001 and does not seem to stop even in 2022, a year marked by a -1.3 percent drop: this is noted by statistics published by Instat, which show that the sharp decline in the population is due in part to the reduction in births and in part to the high rate of emigration affecting the country. 

In fact, the decrease in ceramic consumption projected in Albania's "Ceramic tile market forecast analysis - Trend 2022-2026" is more than one percentage point higher than the average for the geographic area of which it is a part (-0.1 percent decrease in consumption for the Other Europe).