Business
Albania Economy Surges with Canadian Resource Investment
SOURCE -- ProspectingJournal.com -- According to Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha, Albania&#...
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[{"type":"text","content":"\nAlbania Economy Surges with Canadian Resource Investment\n\nSOURCE -- ProspectingJournal.com -- According to Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha, Albania’s economy increased during the first 9 months of the year, fueled by increased exports of goods and resources. Though the country still has a long road ahead of it in terms of living up to its growth potential, and before it joins the EU in 2015, this emerging economy is being stoked by outsiders, including a pair of first-movers from Canada looking to bring new methods of development to old resource discoveries.\n \nWhile skepticism may be directed towards Albania’s forward-looking success, Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty only yesterday painted a slightly bleaker outlook for Canada’s economy. Amidst these two differing stances, the unseemly relationship between the two countries was addressed last week at the first ever Canadian-Albanian Business Forum held in Tirana, Albania, which welcomed Canada’s primary first-movers in the Albania resource sector: Banker’s Petroleum [BNK – TSX] (oil and gas) and Tirex Resources [TXX – TSX.V] (VMS minerals).\n \nTwo months on the heels of the first US-Albania Investment Forum held in New York City, the Canada/Albania connection was celebrated and reinforced with appearances by Abby Badwi (CEO of Bankers Petroleum) and Bryan Slusarchuk (CEO of Tirex Resources), whose companies’ actions better represent a new era of resource sector development in Albania. While Badwi and Slusarchuk typically face scrutiny from prospective investors back home, their companies have each received an unlikely vote of confidence from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).\n \nThe EBRD represents an accumulative business volume of $20B invested across 29 countries from central Europe to central Asia, but within Albania’s natural resource sector, only two investments have been made: Bankers in oil and gas, and Tirex in mining. In fact, of the 3,268 projects the bank has participated in since 1991, the $10.5 million investment by EBRD in Tirex’s Mirdita Project is the bank’s first support of the mining exploration industry.\n \nInitially the EBRD’s stance on mining has been heavily risk-averse since its inception, straying away from speculative sectors...