Assessing export challenges faced by albanian SMEs
Assessing export challenges faced by albanian SMEs

Summary/Abstract: Nowadays, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly being recognized as a vital part of a country’s economy. Albania is a country in transition and after the communist era, has been on a difficult path to overcome many social, political and economic difficulties. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and investigate the SMEs in Albania and the levels of exportation as an important element for the EU integration. This study is mainly of investigative and explorative nature, aiming to conclude which industry sector exports the most and to highlight the main partners (in terms of nations) and also to identify or flag the perceived barriers that Albanian companies classify as impediments to exporting goods. The instrument used was a questionnaire of 50 items and the participants where Albanian organizations (N = 163) from different sectors of the economy. Data were analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics 20. The results indicate that the main three barriers that impede them from exporting are: the lack of planning about exportation, the difficulty of finding new clients in EU and the high levels of the accompanying risk. For 30% of the tradable sector, the difficulty of finding new clients in the European market was considered as one of the most challenging, anyway, it should be noted that only 36% of this sector plans to export in the next 1-3 years. Despite their perception towards barriers, most of the organizations were planning to export in the future.

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