Kosovo Manufacturing Club expresses dissatisfaction and opposes the Government of Albania’s decision to impose a road tax on “Nation’s Road”. According to this decision, all vehicles going to the Nation’s Road will be forced to pay a tax that ranges from 2.5 euros to motorcycles, 5 euros for cars and up to 22.5 euros for transporting trucks. But this value is multiplied by two, as it is paid off both at the entrance and at the exit of Albania.
This tax is high, disproportionate and generates additional and unnecessary costs, especially for Kosovo manufactures who export to Albania, this only increases the cost of export for Kosovo manufactures and is also an additional barrier to trade relations between Kosovo and Albania. The imposition of this tax on the Nation’s Road is also an obstacle for Kosovo’s manufactures, an additional obstacle to the obstacles such as payments for scanners, the refusal of phytosanitary certificates, long and unnecessary checks on products, which only cause delays and hence increase cost.
This tax is very high considering the fact that road safety is lacking and often lacks the necessary signaling and the road does not meet all the standards, where a part of the highway is still unfinished. Also compared to the average prices for the category of trucks, this tax is much higher. If we take as a comparative example the average price of the highway in Macedonia, which is about 16.5 cents per km, the average price of the highway in Serbia is about 14.2 cents per km, while in Albania it is about 20.3 cents per km. This means that the price per km on Albania’s highway is 22.7% more expensive than in Macedonia and 42.75% more expensive than in Serbia. The highway distance is taken for the Morine-Milot section, which is 111 km long.
Kosovo Manufacturing Club understands that the maintenance of the road is costly, but this tax is very high compared to the conditions that it does offer. The club asks the Ministry of Infrastructure to establish contacts and to hold negotiations with the Government of Albania, because this decision seriously undermines efforts to strengthen economic and trade exchanges, which are often proclaimed as a strategic interest of both governments.