Debt - external: $500 million (1994 est.)

Economic aid: recipient : ODA, $NA

Currency: 1 lek (L) = 100 qintars

Exchange rates: leke (L) per US$1 - 150.00 (May 1997), 104.50 (1996), 92.70 (1995), 94.62 (1994), 102.06 (1993), 75.03 (1992)

Fiscal year: calendar year

@Albania: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 Tirane exchange to Italy and Greece

Radio broadcast stations: AM 17, FM 1, shortwave 0

Radios: 577,000 (1991 est.)