Law amends for industrial zones, lower taxes for 5 years

14/02/2015 00:00

What started a few years ago as a project that would encourage
investments and the economic activity in our country, the construction
of a network of industrial areas, remained only on paper.

The former government approved nine economic areas in 2008-2009, 8 industrial parks and a free area. But due to a series of problems,s tarting from the property ownership and the missing infrastructure, none of them were realized.

The new government seems to have returned to the project once again. The Council of Ministers approved a draft law that increases the fiscal facilities in economic areas. The draft says that in private areas, which are built by privates, construction businesses and the companies that will establish their business there will be excluded from VAT for five years.

For the second five years, the VAT they will pay will be 50% of the legal norm. Every non-Albanian good that will be produced in these premises will be excluded from VAT and other indirect taxes.

The second category, that of business development areas, once known as industrial parks, will not have such facilities. The business development areas, different from free zones, are built by the government with budget money. For this category there will be other facilities, such as the exclusion of VAT for raw materials, removal of infrastructure tax and that on immovable assets for the first five years.

Albania remains one of the fewest countries in the region without privileged business areas. Countries like Croatia, Macedonia, Turkey and Slovenia have many of them. The fiscal facilities of the new law are one more encouragement. The first experience showed that the main causes why the project failed were such as land ownership and financial inability from the government to built the surrounding infrastructure. If these problems do not take a solution, the fiscal facilities of the new law will most likely remain on paper.

Top Channel