After the support he received at the Summit from European leaders for a fourth term, a strong message also comes from the US. President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in a video message at one of the most important international economic forums held in Tirana, calls Edi Rama a capable politician.
He emphasizes that this government has changed the living climate and made Albania a safe place to invest.
Many have asked him why he is investing in Albania, but President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, says he sees the answer in the change that the Rama government has brought to the country.
With strategic investor status since January, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will build a resort worth $1.4 billion on Sazan Island, with the Albanian state also part of the investment.
PART OF KUSHNER'S SPEECH:
Edi is a very capable, powerful politician and a smart leader. The fact that he was an artist I thought it would be amazing how a country is led and built by an artist. Someone with fantastic taste and quite a lot of creativity and I was intrigued by that.
Before we left for Corfu we stopped at Butrint. It was a fantastic view and it seemed to me that it showed a lot of potential with a wonderful beauty. The country has a natural beauty but it seemed like a place that no one knew or understood and it's not like I thought about it during this year. And a year later we started looking at opportunities in the Balkans and I chose Albania because I had a good experience and we were quite attracted when we learned that a new airport is being built in Vlora.
The fact that a country is building an airport on the coast and in what they think is the most beautiful place, we looked for opportunities and found a wonderful opportunity. This came from the desire to build something that I think will be unique in the world.
There are moments where you think, is it worth it or not, what the hell am I doing this for, but I was very intrigued. We spent a year understanding the market and the demographics, the trends that the country is growing at twice the rate of Europe.
We spent a year understanding the market before we moved forward. My partner Asher, who led this project, was the 'man with his boots on the ground', as we were designing this project we fell more in love with what we were creating, and the environment was perfect.
If it weren't for the wonderful work and our down-to-earth team, and the government that created a pro-development environment, we wouldn't be dealing with this project.
When it was announced that we were doing this project, the New York Times said that there are many laws that were changed to benefit us, and did that happen to you too? And I said, I don't know these laws at all, but I called my partner and he said no, and we decided to go ahead with this.
But the New York Times understood that these are laws that are for development. When they unveil the plans everyone will understand how we have embraced the local environment, but it all comes down to the location because it is 20 minutes away from Italy and 60 miles from Corfu and as I said, Vlora airport is 10 minutes away.
The beauty and location are wonderful, you are right in the center of the Mediterranean, but due to the bad history that Albania had until the 1990s, it was underdeveloped. There are no such opportunities in the Mediterranean where there have been major developments.
When I have invested in real estate in the past, I have always been drawn to markets that are undervalued and uncharted, but that have all the right elements to explode. I bought in SoHo before it was fashionable, in Brooklyn before it was trendy, and in Jersey City before it was even recognized as an opportunity. Albania has the same potential, people are just not used to seeing it. We think we are ten years ahead of the curve. The country has the size, position and institutional approach that creates extraordinary development opportunities. (A2 Televizion)
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