Game... without numbers and propaganda

2024-05-05 22:37:33, Ekonomi CNA

If there is one figure that the government often brags about, it is the number of tourists. Every day we are bombarded with 10 million tourists who visited the country, with the increase of flights, where we ranked first in the world, and so on.

There is no doubt that the tourism boom is one of the most positive developments (if not the only) of the country in recent years, but the government, apart from any merit, has been more fortunate in this regard.

The beauty of the country, the climate, the sun, advertising as a low-cost destination and the entry of low-cost airlines are attracting foreigners from all over the world.

The government itself, as we have often said, is failing to keep up with this momentum, although it never hesitates to advertise its achievements. The infrastructure in the center and north of the country is in a poor state.

Tourists are not only shocked by potholes, but also get "lost" on the roads. While the government, which boasted that it will launch two satellites into space, which cost over 3 million euros, has not yet taken the trouble to digitize the road transport map on Google (except for Tirana, which it recently added, and Rinas).

But, in the end, what does that matter?! The 10 million tourists last year, or their expected increase of 30-40% this year, will remain the news again. The government is indifferent to explain how this high flow is failing to revive consumption in the country.

And we don't expect it to. Because, otherwise, he would accept what is obvious, but he refuses to see it, the high rate of emigration, especially of young people, which the prime minister calls at normal levels, as in the whole world.

Even the census, which would have given a more accurate estimate of the population, besides being postponed for years, took another 6 months to compile the result.

Beyond the multimillion-dollar figures, information frenzy is a common occurrence.

Apart from the Bank of Albania and the Ministry of Finance, which are more regular in the publication of information and figures, and INSTAT, which has the task (although the site is more inactive than active), in other departments it is very difficult to get information , despite the fact that each of them has a section on transparency and public information on their pages. We take them in turn:

Do you know that the citizens do not know the public wealth, since the government has failed to publish the register with the inventory of public assets. Today there is no register in which public assets are inventoried. Such a register would help improve the management of public assets.

The Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy may return an answer after a few months, even though the law on the right to information provides for a 10-day deadline.

"Monitor" tried to get information about wheat production from the Ministry of Agriculture, but no figures were made available and this is not the first time.

This Minister, who a year ago encouraged farmers to produce wheat by giving them subsidies, today does not know what is happening with this product.

Or earlier, when farmers were criticized for overproducing olives and olive oil.

When we cannot measure production or consumption, what analysis and stimulus policies can we do?!

Every year there is overproduction of one or several products, which often end up in the canal, without any solution or support policy. And this is to be expected when moving from overproduction criticized by ministers to underproduction of statistics.

Sometimes it seems to us that we are asking for a little as "a lot", although statistics are the A for the design of any policy aimed at the development of the country.

While Albania, for a long time, has announced that it wants to join the European Union, a good statistical system and, above all, reliable, would be necessary for the integration of the country in the EU, but also in the international financial markets.

It is not for nothing that there is a well-known expression in the world: "Statistics are worse than the lies themselves". As important as they are to show the reality and to design development policies, they can be so harmful if they are used to "manipulate public opinion".

Unfortunately, the scale seems to lean more towards the second than the first, risking that instead of taking us forward, it might take us back decades./ Monitor.al