Shkodra free zone

1939-1944: Special strategic interest was paid to the
infrastructure. The airport and port of Shkodra were fully efficient.
Trade relations with Kosovo and Italy were restored. The allies
managed to submerge 16 sailing crafts, the owners being from
Ulqini, but residents in Shkodra for generations.
1944-1992: The massive fluvial transportation came to an
end. In 1945 the State sequestrated 35 sailing crafts left (the owners
being from Shkodra but of Ulqini origin) out of which only one,
Saint Nicola, belonged to an owner from Saranda.
The total isolation of Albania from Europe and the World
from 1944 to 1992, the extremely centralized economy, the
severance of capitalistic relations, the stalemate of the free market,
the prohibition of any kind of trade, the expropriations and
sequestration of the personal property, and the theft of private
capital, finally ruined the economy of the City. Although Shkoder
was until recently estimated as the second largest city in terms of the
population, statistic data prove that in all aspects there were but very
few investments (compared to those in other cities) made in the
recent years.
1992-1998: Even after the democratic system in Albania was
decreed, the city, for a number of reasons, was lagging behind in
terms of the economic development. In the course of accomplishing
the post-communist transition in Albania, the economists, graduates
of the University of Tirana, assumed the position of economic reform
leaders not having the proper knowledge or data on the most
appropriate comparative techniques to be used in Albania. The
reformers of our times, because of unknown matters and dealing with
unexpected subjective identifications, embarked on this mission
without mastering the appropriate concepts or guidelines. As the
worst and systematically damaged city in the past, the postcommunist
transition repeated, in Shkoder, a tempest that
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