State encourages individuals to buy home insurance!

The waters from the floods of the recent days in Albania have now retreated. But, this has prompted the usual debate; that on the compensation of those who are affected by the floods. How will this compensation be made? According to the head of the government, Edi Rama, “the state budget cannot always pay for everything” when it comes to natural disasters. This incentive was mentioned a few months ago as a draft which has been discussed by Albanian authorities with the World Bank. But, according to experts of the Financial Monitoring Authority (AMF), this discussion has been put on hold. “It exists as a project, but we still don’t know how far it has advanced, because this is done by government organizations responsible for this and not AMF. This has been a draft prepared by the World Bank. In a way, the draft has been put on hold now and it has not been reactivated as a project”, they declare about Albanian Free Press.

Meanwhile, let us recall that the head of AMF, Ervin Koçi said that we need to be very careful when making home insurance obligatory. All of these stances show that it is still not known as to when such project could be implemented, although it was announced by the head of the government during the meeting of the Committee for the Management of Crises. Meanwhile, the ministry of Finance is not able to offer an answer either as to when compensation for people affected by the floods, will be paid. According to experts from this ministry, the process of assessment is yet to start. So, according to official sources from the ministry of Finance there must be a reallocation of funds from the emergency fund or the contingency fund. According to experts of the ministry of Finance, everything depends on the amount that is needed for such process. “We don’t know whether the funds that we already have are enough or whether we need other funds. To know this, the process for the assessment of damages must first start”, they say, further explaining that the budget contingency fund, the one which is spent on compensation has not been touched and is available. “Everything depends on the amount of indemnity. There needs to be a comparison with the existing situation and come up with the extra funds which are needed”, experts of the ministry of Finance say.