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