Prime Minister Sali Berisha: This is the largest budget in history The 2011 budget was 362 billion lek. The government is planning a figure of 353.8 billion lek for next year. However, the head of government promises higher wages and pensions The news Prime Minister Berisha indirectly admitted yesterday that Albania is not experiencing economic growth; on the contrary, its figures are negative. He presented the 2012 budget as the largest in the country’s history, but approved revenues 2% lower than this year By Genc Kondi The Council of Ministers approved yesterday the draft budget for 2012, but all economists have been left astonished after hearing the prime minister’s statements about the revenue figures. According to projections, the deficit is expected to remain at the levels recommended by the IMF, while revenues are two percent lower than in the initial 2011 budget. Prime Minister Berisha has deliberately ignored the fact that for this year an even higher revenue figure had been projected than the one now being presented to Parliament. According to him, this is the largest budget in history, which must guarantee the country’s macroeconomic stability. “This is the largest budget in the country’s history. The 2012 budget has been drafted by the Ministry of Finance, based on the objectives of ensuring macroeconomic stability. As we have pledged, there is and can be no increase in debt, only a reduction in it; there is no increase in the budget deficit, only a reduction in it. We have decided to focus on the major objective—raising wages and pensions. Next year we will be one of the few countries that raise salaries, pensions and economic assistance,” Berisha stressed. In the photo: Prime Minister Sali Berisha at the government meeting In the 2011 budget, approved one year earlier by the Parliament of Albania, the revenue figure had been set at 362 billion new lek. This figure is two percent lower than the 353.8 billion now being approved, although the government, in the middle of this year, made a correction, by... Continued on page 5

Editorial BY Arben Rrozhani “Albania will become Europe’s landfill,” wrote the online newspaper of the distinguished Russian “Pravda” on 28 October 2011. The item was placed in the “business” section, because according to the author what Albania will do is simply a business, considering that thanks to the law newly passed for the second time in the Parliament of Albania, Albania will turn into a garbage bin and the country that has long been Europe’s black hole not only is planning to collect waste from neighboring countries, but also to draw profit from it, calculating generous investments from neighboring countries. The author Anatoly Miranovsky, who could today be labeled by the Albanian prime minister as a member of the “Alliance for Garbage,” brutally throws in our face what we are in the eyes of foreigners from an environmental point of view, when he writes: “Meanwhile Europe has seen Albanian rubbish. Croatia’s Dalmatian coast is now cleaned of dead livestock. The sea brought the waste to the beaches of the Pelješac peninsula and the island of Mljet. We are talking about around 100 tons of garbage. The rubbish in the streets of Tirana (and elsewhere) does not go away, but is burned, for incineration, while mountains of waste are growing to frightening proportions. A country with a long coastline cannot make money from tourism. Livestock, dogs and other animals are at risk among the mountains of garbage on Albanian beaches.” We should not worry about anything. The government has thought of everything, because it is its business This is Albania in the eyes of a distant foreigner and speaks of the garbage that has overwhelmed Albania. Up to now, two days after the law was passed in Parliament. What will it be like tomorrow? On the night of 31 December 2011, Malgrato, the place where municipal waste from the Lazio region is unloaded, will be closed. In Naples they have calculated everything and the ships with waste should set out on the “short” route. To Albania. Sharra has plenty of room, Bushati is the new refrigerator, Maliq will first be 10 landfills... We have plenty of riverbanks, barren fields, outskirts of ghost towns. For special waste we have abandoned mined caves, according to the precious need that the mafia of Catania has given us for years. We should not worry about anything. The government has thought of everything, because it is its business. We citizens of the “Alliance for Garbage” only need to head to the ports, with banners in hand: “Welcome to the landfill!”

NEW BOOK By Anila Basha To link the 1400s with the 1900s, or more precisely with the communist dictatorship, and then enter the early years of the democracy of the '90s, that is, an event spanning three different historical periods of our country, to come with a narrative that is both artistic and full of historical truths about Albania and Albanians, you can read this only in the writer’s newest book. The writer provokes the Prophet Muhammad: Corrupted by drink and money Blushi: Albanians are lazy Ben Blushi “Shqipëria”, a book that has just come out in the country’s bookstores. The third book by the writer-politician, this time comes as familiar as his two previous books, which does not make you think that the politician-writer likes history, but it amazes you with the way the writer-politician... In the book you find Lek Dukagjini as the main character, the Albanian prince in the mid-1400s, but... Continued on pages 8-9

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