External Assistance and Albanian Citizens Perceptions about Effectiveness of Coordination

Abstract

During the period 1991-2000 Albania has received an amount of 4.86 mld USD of external assistance. The total of external assistance during 2000-2008 has been 2.93 mld Euro of wich 1.79 mld Euro has been grant and 1.13 mld Euro has been loan. Since 2000, the ratio of external assistance to gross domestic product (GDP) has declined. This is mainly due to increased GDP (which has grown to 8.7 million in 2008 compared with 4.6 million in 2001), than by lowering the levels of external assistance. Over the years in Albania, the nature of the assistance and donors have changed, in particular has changed the nature of the assistance being dominated by technical assistance, development assistance, etc. The assistance referring to development benefiting from multiple sources may create problems regarding management and coordinating from beneficiary country and there by threaten the effectiveness of assistance. In this context it is most possible that different donors develop conflicting programs or overlapping projects reducing the effectiveness of the assistance. Other data suggest that the more the beneficiary country government will be included in the direction and coordination of assistance programs, the more effective and integrated these programs will be in promoting development in the long run period. However, some development experts believe that the presence of numerous donors in one country is not necessarily a bad thing. Competition among donors could resolve development problems and getting results quickly. Referring to the above, in this article we would like to present the following subjects: - How is coordinating external assistance in Albania. Importance, advantages and disadvantages of external assistance coordination. - We will try to identify the «favorite» sectors of donors financing, by analyzing reason of their preferences and distribution of external assistance by region analyzing the fact of concentration of many donors in the same county. - Finally, will try to analyze which is citizen perception about external assistance in Albania.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n3p103