Post date: Mar 28, 2012 1:58:48 PM
POGRADEC, ALBANIA (RECENT) (REUTERS) - Greece was once a promised land for hundreds of thousands of Albanians, a place to make a new start after generations of living in grinding poverty. The economic crisis which hit the country hard in the past years is now forcing many emigrants to return home.
Economic crisis in Greece forces many Albanian emigrants to return home in search of work.
Twenty-four year-old Dorian Bajrami has just returned home to the Albanian town of Pogradic, after living in Greece for 13 years.
"I went to Greece when I was just 11 and I returned here because there was no work, all businesses are closing down there," said Dorian unloading firewood in his grandfather's courtyard.
"The Greek crisis affected not only young people who live there, but us older people too. Instead of them helping us now we are trying to help them as they have returned because there was no work for them," said Dorian's grandfather.
In the past two decades neighbouring Greece has been like a magnet to Albanians, who crossed the border in search of better paid work and business opportunities. There are over half a million legally-registered Albanians living in Greece, though many think the real figure is much higher. For years they've been sending money home to support their families in Albania. But now money and people flowing the opposite way.
About 15 percent of 500,000 registered Albanians have returned home since the crisis began hoping to find work, though official unemployment in Albania is 13,4 percent.
"First we saw them transferring their savings from Greek banks to Albanian banks and in three years time we experienced an increase of roughly 2 billion euros from Greek banks to Albanian banks. Then they transferred all the businesses and lately they arrived themselves to run their businesses. The number of registered businesses has increased tremendously," said Florian Mima, a former Albanian finance minister.
Albanian Artur Metaj made a small fortune in Greece several years ago by selling bermuda shorts to U.S. soldiers. he used the money to get trained as a hairdresser and to open a parlour which employed 14 people near Greek Defence Ministry. At first clients left fat tips, but then began asking for discounts.
"I have returned here and I believe that I will do similar business here in Albania. I have faith in myself and I hope that everything will go well," said Metaj.
Accounting for around 10 percent of Albania's GDP at their peak of 951 million euros in 2007, remittances from Greece have decreased to 834 million in 2008, 782 million in 2009, 689 million in 2010 and 475 million in the nine months of 2011.
Thirty-three year-old Bledian Lime, had been in Greece for 20 years. All his family's belongings fitted in the back of the white minivan he used to cross the Albanian-Greek border, returning home.
"For two years I've been unemployed in Greece, and I had to come back. Greeks themselves have trouble finding jobs," said Lime.
Many businesses in Albania, like small garment workshops working on orders from Italy and Greece have suffered heavy losses or gone bankrupt.
Aida Ferro, who has just returned from Greece, was lucky to find work as a seamstress with the Industria Balkanike e Veshjeve Sh.a., a Greek-Albanian venture producing swimwear for European clients.
"The economic crisis forced us to return to our country, we are trying to integrate ourselves here. I've just started to work here and I still don't know how the economy here is doing, we are trying to adopt to a new life here," said Ferro.
Like many Albanians who have returned she spoke of the comfort of being at home, free from the frequent questions about national and religious identity in Greece. Many Muslim Albanians have changed their names to Orthodox to make their integration and job search easier.
Completing export orders for EU countries was the first industry to feel the impact of the economic crisis in Greece and Italy, but fears of the collapse of inward processing (where raw materials are imported made into goods and reexported to EU countries) did not materialise.
"We have not been hit by the crisis in Greece so far because our products go to Europe and we didn't feel the crisis, if we were working for Greece most probably we would have gone bankrupt," Edmond Haxhi, co-owner of Industria Balkanike e Veshjeve, told Reuters.
Greek businessman, Panajotis Kaglatzis, owner of a garment factory "Greit" once employed over 300 workers. Now he has less then sixty and is trying hard to keep his business running as almost all the orders from Greece have been cancelled.
"Now it is very difficult for me to stay in Greece, I am fighting to survive. The crisis in Greece was a huge obstacle for our business and now I am trying to get work for my companies in Austria and Holland. We are seeking only for continuity in our work, I have to get work outside the country (Greece)."