be as high as 28%

Budget:
revenues: $624 million
expenditures: $996 million, including capital expenditures of $NA

Industries: food processing, textiles and clothing; lumber, oil,
cement, chemicals, mining, basic metals, hydropower

Industrial production growth rate: 6% (1995 est.)

Electricity--production: 5.12 billion kWh (1996)

Electricity--production by source:
fossil fuel: 4.3%
hydro: 95.7%
nuclear: 0%
other: 0% (1996)

Electricity--consumption: 5.27 billion kWh (1996)

Electricity--exports: 0 kWh (1996) (1996)

Electricity--imports: 150 million kWh (1996)

Agriculture--products: wide range of temperate-zone crops and
livestock

Exports: $212 million (f.o.b., 1998 est.)

Exports--commodities: asphalt, metals and metallic ores,
electricity, crude oil, vegetables, fruits, tobacco

Exports--partners: Italy, Greece, Germany, Belgium, US

Imports: $791 million (f.o.b., 1998 est.)

Imports--commodities: machinery, consumer goods, grains

Imports--partners: Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, The Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

Debt--external: $645 million (1996)

Economic aid--recipient: $630 million (1997 pledged)

Currency: 1 lek (L) = 100 qintars

Exchange rates: leke (L) per US$1--139.93 (January 1999), 150.63
(1998), 148.93 (1997), 104.50 (1996), 92.70 (1995), 94.62 (1994)

Fiscal year: calendar year

Communications

Telephones: 55,000

Telephone system:
domestic: obsolete wire system; no longer provides a telephone for
every village; in 1992, following the fall of the communist
government, peasants cut the wire to about 1,000 villages and used
it to build fences
international: inadequate; international traffic carried by
microwave radio relay from the Tirana exchange to Italy and Greece

Radio broadcast stations: AM 16, FM 3, shortwave 4 (1998)

Radios: 577,000 (1991 est.)

Television broadcast stations: 13 (1997)

Televisions: 300,000 (1993 est.)

Transportation

Railways:
total: 447 km (none electrified)
standard gauge: 447 km 1.435-m gauge (1995)

Highways:
total: 18,000 km
paved: 5,400 km
unpaved: 12,600 km (1996 est.)

Waterways: 43 km plus Albanian sections of Lake Scutari, Lake
Ohrid, and Lake Prespa (1990)

Pipelines: crude oil 145 km; petroleum products 55 km; natural
gas 64 km (1991)

Ports and harbors: Durres, Sarande, Shengjin, Vlore

Merchant marine:
total: 8 cargo ships