In the face of economic and social conditions that Albania confronts nowadays

For many years the phenomenon of offshore outsourcing has softened the economic problems of developing countries. The main industries that have developed thanks to outsourcing are labor-intensive industries and services. We recognize achievement indicators for developing countries like China, India, Philippines, etc. The reasons vary as the country's size, costs, level of education, the policies of the host country and many others. The set of these factors not only affects to the promotion of foreign investments, but also to the growth rate of an industry compared with others or international trade level for a particular category of goods / services. Albania has positive figures of development of offshore outsourcing particularly on apparel industry. The industry has been able to survive over two decades even though the economic and political changes. The modest data show little information about the characteristics of this industry, in terms of sector size, number of firms and their size, type of products, etc. The growth of the industry is focused only on positive net exports. The purpose of this paper is presenting a different picture of the industry, focusing on factors directly related to the development of apparel firms. Some of them are the functions (processes) they do, products, their experience, location, etc. This paper will help being familiar with the main characteristics of this industry as well as providing some important conclusions for its development in the future.

One of the main challenges Albanian market is currently facing is the successful survival of

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether this kind of innovative service was successful in all developing countries. Prior to the introduction and implementation of M-Pesa, people used a variety of formal and informal channels to save or send money to others. It is supposed that through mobile money technology, the population currently out of the reach of financial services will be integrated as formal players into the market and that informal ways of transferring money will be reduced (Jenkins, 2008). Financial inclusion is an issue that has gathered a lot of attention among policymakers and researchers and is referred to as a process that guarantees ease on access, availability and also the usage of banking services for all householders of a country (Sarma, 2010). Without doubt, the introduction of M-Pesa in Kenya has deeply changed the way through which transactions occur. Based on the review of the literature but also the case-studies on the application of M-Pesain Albania and other countries, at the end of the paper we give some important conclusions.

This paper aims to analyze business liquidity perceptions during the Covid-19 lockdown and how the lockdown affected businesses. The research methodology used in this paper consists of a literature review on businesses in the lockdown and an analysis of data collected through a survey conducted in the second quarter of 2020, immediately after the Covid-19 restriction measures were imposed. The sample used contains 180 businesses from a population of 166,386 businesses in Albania, providing a 7.30% error according to the Raosoft calculator. A more in-depth analysis was made by comparison, using box-plots for liquidity issues and problems faced by small, medium and large businesses (SMLEs) during the pandemic. The degree of significance of factors taken into consideration in this study is expressed by Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient (PCC) and an econometric model. The processing and analysis of data was made using SPSS V21. From the analysis of the factors considered and the size of the business, two important conclusions emerge: (1) the exercise of activity for Albanian businesses is closely related to the payments and the business perspective (bankruptcy risk); (2) the fear of bankruptcy was felt more by big business, while medium business had fewer problems referring to all the factors taken into consideration. The econometric model determined the most important factors for assessing the level of impact of Covid-19: Failure Perception, Support from Solidarity Packages, and Cash Reserves Usage. Surprisingly, it is noticed that businesses attribute the use of cash reserves (C.R.U) to different expenses/liabilities compared to the traditional ones treated in this study.