Euro depreciates, businesses and individuals complain

“It was Christmas and I had to sell some euros. The closest bureau d’echange was in a mall, although it was a holiday. What rate did I get for my euros? 121 lek!”. Luan looked surprised as he was talking to his friend about the low exchange rate of the European currency at the end of this year. “Two days ago, the value of a euro was 122 lek. How can the euro fall like this on a daily basis”, he added.  In fact, many individuals and businesses, who get paid in euros and who make their spending in lek. In other words, they get paid in euros and they spend in lek. They lose. This is also the case with a family of two elderly people who live on 300 euros that they son sends them from Italy. “We’re barely making our ends meet. This year, we’ve had less than a year ago. When we exchange them, we get 1 thousand lek less. With that money, we used to pay water or some other bill”, the mother says. Meanwhile, we also have the case of a businesswoman, who has rented her premises out. “It’s been a year now and our income from the rent has been going down, because we receive them in euro and our expenses are in lek”, Vilma, who is partner in a company, says.

Experts: Migrant workers are driving the price of euro down

Experts in Albania are explaining the drop of the value of euro with the arrival of migrant workers in the country, who are injecting a lot of euro in the domestic market.

Meanwhile, experts say that the euro is also being depreciated as a result of the decrease in consumption.

Bank of Albania’s data indicate that the euro supply this year has been high. Meanwhile, in December, the euro has dropped by 1.5 lek in value.