The Minister of Finance and Economy in a statement to the media informed that for the first three months the economy in the country has grown by 2.72%, where she emphasized that the population's consumption has also increased.
Ibrahimaj said that the income from tourism in the first quarter brought income to the state coffers and that the number of foreign people who entered our country was 2.4 million.
Sakaq added that the strengthening of the lek against the euro and foreign currencies remains a concern for the Ministry of Finance, adding that this is a consequence of the increase in investments and exports.
"Electricity has increased by 38.6%. The consumption of the population has also been increasing. The headline of last year was inflation, and it will continue to be, where in May it was 4.7%. The main component of the increase has been the inflation of food and beverages, which has the main weight of the basket. The activity related to tourism has increased by 7.2% and the data shows a positive increase, the number of tourists was 2.4 million foreigners in the country. This shows that our policies for promoting tourism have had the right effect, tourism has started to be a phenomenon distributed throughout the year.
The number of employees in this sector has increased by 11.2%, we expect that for the second quarter tourism will continue to have a positive performance, this also shows that the income related to tourism has reached the level of 189.5 million euros.
Regarding foreign investments, they have also had an upward trend, reaching the level of 108 million euros, the main positive contribution was made by the insurance sub-branch and the extractive industry. Remittances have started to increase, with 16% marking the value of 214 million euros. All these values are related to the concern that has come from some business activities, i.e. the exchange rate. We had a strengthening of the lek against foreign currencies, but it was more sensitive compared to the euro. The strengthening of the lek against the euro comes as a result of the performance of the economy, especially with exports, but also with the increase in foreign investments, which have brought capital in foreign currency and influenced the exchange rate, she said .