TIRANA, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- The Albanian government will decrease the agriculture budget in the coming years in a bid to reduce the public debt, according to local media.
Agriculture funds will drop to 0.53 percent of national production in 2019, compared with 0.66 percent or 10.9 billion lek (around 101 million U.S. dollars) this year. In 2021 it will drop further to 0.48 percent.
Agriculture employs almost half of Albania's labor population and agricultural production accounts for about 20 percent of GDP.
The government has committed itself to reducing the public debt from the current nearly 69 percent to 63.5 percent by 2020.
According to economists, the tightening of budget policy is expected to affect other sectors of the economy besides agriculture, as the government will have less room for new debt.
