Quarterly Monetary Policy Report, 2021/III

The Albanian economy showed encouraging signs in the first half of 2020. The recovery of economic activity gained momentum in the second quarter of year. A broad gamma of factors supports this recovery which is present across all sectors of the economy. Relaxation of restrictions as vaccination progresses; the increased business and consumer’s confidence; the improvement in the economies of our trading partners; as well as the supportive monetary and fiscal policies have fuelled the expansion in consumption, private and public investments, and exports. In particular, the accommodative monetary policy stance has created an environment with low financing costs, adequate lending conditions, and a relatively stable exchange rate. Given these positive trends, our economic growth projections in 2021 have been revised upwards and our expectations of inflation converging to target in 2022 have been strengthened.
The Supervisory Council, in its regular meeting, assessed that the current monetary policy stance is adequate for underpinning both the further economic recovery and inflation converge to target. In this view, the Supervisory Council decided to keep the policy rate unchanged, at 0.5%. Maintaining the adequate financing conditions will bolster consumption and investments, which in turn will drive the increase of employment and wages as well as enable inflation gradually, converge to the target.