04/06/2026
ALBANIA BUSINESS STRUCTURE 2021–2025: GROWTH WITHOUT BALANCE
Business Registry data aligned with European Business Statistics shows that Albania has expanded its entrepreneurial base between 2021–2025, but the nature of this growth raises important structural concerns.
Active legal entities increased from 209,591 to 250,097 (+19.3%), while active enterprises reached 137,892 (+16.2%). Agriculture stands out with a sharp rise in formalization, as farmers with NIPT increased by 78.3% (62,922 → 112,205).
Yet this expansion is largely quantitative rather than qualitative.
Extreme territorial concentration persists
Economic activity remains heavily centralized:
Tirana alone holds 47.8% of enterprises, and together with Durrës and Vlorë, about two-thirds of all business activity is concentrated in just three counties.
Regional distribution confirms the imbalance:
Central Region 53.6% | Southern 25.0% | Northern 21.5%
This is not just a development pattern—it reflects a structural territorial dependency on the Tirana–Durrës corridor, limiting balanced national development.
Services dominate, but production carries hidden weight
The economy is overwhelmingly service-based (86% of enterprises), while goods production accounts for only 14%.
However, production sectors generate nearly one-third of total turnover, revealing a dual economy:
a large number of low-productivity service firms versus a smaller, high-impact production base.
This mismatch highlights a weak productivity structure masked by numerical expansion.
A fragile enterprise pyramid
Micro enterprises dominate almost entirely (98.5%), while large firms are only 1.5% of the total.
Despite their small number, large firms generate:
• 48.6% of employment
• 44.8% of sales
This creates a highly concentrated economic reality where a very small group of firms carries systemic economic weight, while the vast majority remain structurally fragile and unable to scale. The missing middle—medium enterprises—remains the most critical weakness of the system.
Limited foreign investment depth
Foreign or joint-capital enterprises account for only 5.3% of the total. Even though Italy dominates with 41.8% of this segment, overall pe*******on remains shallow.
This signals a continued dependence on a narrow set of investors and a lack of diversification into higher-value sectors such as technology, advanced manufacturing, and logistics.
Albania’s economy is not constrained by lack of business activity, but by imbalanced development:
• Over-concentration in a single region
• Over-dominance of micro firms
• Weak scaling capacity
• Limited productive diversification
• Shallow foreign investment base
The result is a system that grows, but does not fully transform.
Formalization has advanced strongly, but productivity and structural upgrading lag behind. Without addressing these gaps, convergence with the EU risks remaining statistical rather than real.
Read more https://altax.al/en/albania-business-outlook-2025/
