TIRANA (Albania), December 19 (SeeNews) – Albania's parliament said it adopted the 2020 draft budget targeting economic growth of up to 4.1% and budget deficit equivalent to 1.6% of the planned gross domestic product (GDP).
The draft budget, approved in a 90-9 vote with two abstentions in the 140-seat parliament, envisages revenues of 502.7 billion leks ($4.5 billion/4.1 billion euro), up 6.2% from the 2019 estimate, while expenditure are expected to increase by 5.1% to 532 billion leks, the parliament said in a press release late on Wednesday.
The public debt-to-GDP ratio is expected to decrease to 62.2% in 2020, from 64% of GDP estimated for the current year.
Despite a devastating earthquake on November 26, the main parameters of the budget will not change, prime minister Edi Rama said in a separate statement in early December.
A 6.3 magnitude earthquake, the worst to hit Albania in decades, left 51 people dead and around 3,000 injured.
According to Rama, the government will start reconstruction works with an initial budget of 20 billion leks, out of which 13 billion leks will be transferred from budget revenues and 7 billion leks will come from donations.
Last month, finance minister Anila Denaj said that the government has decided to lower its projection for the country's economic growth this year to 3.4% from 4.3% forecast at the beginning of the year.
In 2018, Albania's GDP grew by 4.06%, after a 3.84% increase in 2017, the office of statistics has said.
(1 euro = 120.967 leks)