The GDP per capita in Albania (2000-2009)

Although Albania has had a good economic performance in the last years, the level of poverty remains high. One of the indicators for individual wealth in a country is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, which is measured as the ratio between the GDP and the total population of that country.

Open Data Albania has conducted a research work based on the per capita GDP data provided by the World Bank.

To make the data comparable with other countries, per capita GDP is converted in U.S. dollars (USD). There are two methodologies for measuring the GDP per capita in a foreign currency: the current exchange rate method (present) and the constant exchange rate (of a given year) method (in the case of the World Bank data, the given year is 2000 and the exchange rate ALL/USD is estimated at 102.12).

The GDP per capita in USD during the last decade has changed according to the following graph:

^{Source: World Bank
Analysis and comments: ODA}

In 2009, the GDP per capita at current exhange rate is 3,808 USD, while measured with the constant exchange rate of 2000, it is 1,863 USD. One should note that the reason for the difference between the two indicators of GDP per capita is the exchange rate: the domestic currency (ALL) has been continuously appreciated to the USD, except for 2009, being characterized by a depreciation.

The largest increase of per capita GDP in USD measured with the exchange rate method is observed in 2004 (31.55%), while the lowest increase was in 2009 (-7.7%).

To eliminate the effect of the exchange rate, the GDP per capita growth rate with constant exhange rate is calculated. In this case, the largest increase of GDP per capita is observed in 2008 (13.7%), while the lowest increase was in 2009 (2.11%). In average, the individual wealth of an Albanian person has grown by about 5% over the past decade.

The growth rate of GDP per capita is presented graphically below:
 

^{Source: World Bank
Analysis and comments: ODA}

The full information is presented in the table below:

^{Source: World Bank
Analysis and comments: ODA}