Will the shrinking population reshape the administrative map?

In the last 12 years, the Albanian population has shrunk by nearly 400 thousand inhabitants. The data of Censin 2023 show that about 2.4 million people currently live in our country.

The administrative-territorial reform was undertaken in 2014, precisely because of the effects that had produced the demographic, social and economic changes, which were highlighted by the 2011 Census, where the population of Albania resulted in a decrease compared to 2001.

For this reason, since many units had shrunk and did not have the ability to provide services, the government decided to reduce the local self-government units from 373 to 61 municipalities, giving the opportunity to new units to have larger territories under management. , higher population numbers, in order to increase the ability to administer taxes, collect revenues and increase the quality of services. Another goal was to reduce costs.

But already a decade after this reform, we find ourselves at the same crossroads. Due to the phenomenon of emigration, municipalities have lost population, shrinking significantly. Referring to the 2023 census, 14 out of 61 municipalities have under administration a population of less than 10 thousand inhabitants, while 5 municipalities have less than 5 thousand inhabitants, such as Libohova, Këlcyra, Pusteci, Konsipoli, Fushë-Arresi.

In the sectoral strategy of public finance management 2023-2030, the government envisages the review and updating of the formula of unconditional transfers for municipalities, using new data based on the population census, which shows that funds from this mechanism for municipalities that are shrunk, they will fall.

On the other hand, the gradual development and implementation of an additional system of grants based on performance, on measurable and verifiable indicators is intended. But how capable will small municipalities be to achieve a high level of performance and absorb these grants?

The data from the local government show that these municipalities are economically weak, since the revenues they collect fail to fulfill their main functions. In these conditions, another challenge is put on the "table" for the government, how to make these municipalities economically stable and can their further reduction be a solution?