UN General Assembly
2011

visited Albania for tourism and other purposes has increased, from 300,000 in 2004 to 3.5 million last year. Recently, during this period of major European and global financial crises, Albania’s economy remained one of the few in the world that did not experience a recession. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development estimates that global foreign direct investment decreased by 37 per cent from 2007 to 2010, while the same source confirms that in Albania it grew by 316 per cent from 2006 to 2010. Over the past few years, Albanian exports have grown by 300 per cent. Unemployment has decreased, and so has poverty, by a margin of some 30 per cent. Our economic model is based entirely on economic freedom. Last year, that freedom suffered a major setback worldwide, whereas in my country it increased by 16 per cent. The Albanian economy is not detached from the global economy. In fact, the opposite is true: being a small economy, it is linked to and affected by it. That is