The Assembly of Albania is holding a plenary session today, where the agenda is to consider the draft budget 2025 in principle.

The Assembly announced that the plenary session will take place at 10:00 a.m. by order of the Speaker of the Assembly, Elisa Spiropali.

The Ministry of Finance of Albania has published the draft budget for 2025, according to which the economy is expected to expand by about 3.9% in 2025.

According to the draft budget report, economic activity will continue to be supported mainly by domestic demand, by the further growth of private consumption, as well as by investments in infrastructure and the development of strategic sectors such as tourism.

The total revenue of the state budget is expected to reach 754.6 billion ALL. Budget revenue programming is based on improving fiscal administration and minimizing informality in the economy. Budget revenues for 2025 are predicted at the level of 28.8% of GDP.

Compared to the revised plan for 2024, the budget revenues for 2025 are predicted to be about ALL 40.6 billion or 0.2% of GDP more.

Budget expenditures for 2025 are programmed at 822.7 billion ALL or about 31.4% of GDP, resulting in about 51.4 billion ALL more than the revised plan of 2024.

Public Investments for 2025 are planned at 6.2% of GDP or 161.8 billion ALL.

The Ministry of Finance has announced that it will continue to finance a significant volume of public investments of an average of 6.1% of GDP during 2025-2027, which are focused on financing projects of strategic importance and related to the EU Growth Plan .

Planned expenditures for this period are supported by the National Strategy for Development and Integration 2021-2030, paying special attention to digitization, transport, national security, health, education and agriculture and rural development.

Local budget expenditures for 2025 are estimated at 89.9 billion ALL, with an increase of 13.2% more than the 2024 budget. These expenditures for 2025 account for 3.43% of GDP from 2.9% in 2024. or from 2.3% in 2015.

The budget deficit for 2025 is planned to be at the level of 2.6% of GDP and is expected to decrease further, reaching 1.4% of GDP in 2027.

Also, the gross public debt will follow the downward trajectory in accordance with the respective fiscal rule. In 2024, gross public debt is projected to decline to around 56.3% of GDP and is expected to further decline to around 55.8% in 2025.

According to the base scenario, gross public debt is expected to fall to around 55.0% in 2026 and further to around 48.5% in 2031./ATSH/