In the most recent report on the candidate countries to join the Union, the European Commission analyzes the entire Albanian economy as well as the specific sectors. When it comes to monetary policy, the European Union’s executive arm puts emphasis on key developments, such as strengthening ALL against Europe by about 7% compared to the previous year, as well as the Central Bank’s ultra-moderate monetary policies.
Among other things, Brussels clarifies that the Central Bank has implemented the Basel III standard by setting the minimum capital requirement for banks to 12%. Regarding the banking sector as a whole, the report underlines the fact that it is well-capitalized, with the minimum capital requirement at 18.2%, thus far beyond the level required by the Bank of Albania. As far as loans are concerned, the rows indicate that interest rates for households continued to stay close to the low historical record level.
For lending in ALL, they range to 7% per month on average, 0.3 percentage points below the level of the previous year, the European Commission says. For business, average rates are fixed at 6.5%, 0.1 percentage points below 2017. The European Commission also emphasizes the decline in lending in all sectors, except for manufacturing.