Imports and exports in the South-East European countries

Open Data Albania has conducted a research work on the imports and exports of goods in the South-East European countries, based on datasets provided by the Bank of Albania, the Central Bank of the Republic of Kosovo, and the IMF for the year 2010.
In order to enable the comparison between imports and exports of these countries, the data are calculated as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The following figure shows the amounts of exports and imports as a % of GDP for each country:

^{Source: Bank of Albania, Central Bank of the Republic of Kosovo, IMF
Analysis and comments: ODA}

Comparing to the other countries of the region, Albania and Kosovo have the lowest percentage of exports. The values of exported goods are respectively 9.5% and 4.6% of GDP, while Macedonia exports 37.1%, Serbia 20.9% and Montenegro 17.3%.

Concerning the imports, Montenegro has the highest level (67.6%), followed by Macedonia (59.7%), Kosovo (47.6%), Serbia (40.2%) and Albania (35.8%) which has the lowest amount of imports compared to the GDP.

The following table shows the main type of goods imported and exported:

^{Source: Bank of Albania, Central Bank of the Republic of Kosovo, IMF
Analysis and comments: ODA}

Levels of exports in Albania and Kosovo are very low compared to the other countries of the region. Increasing the level of exports is decisive to the economic development, and countries such as Albania and Kosovo should make the necessary moves to do so by increasing product quality and specialization in goods and services that they manage to produce more efficiently than other countries.