When the earthquake of November 26, 2019 struck Albania, the government faced an unprecedented test. Within days, the country was overwhelmed by grief, fear, and uncertainty, but simultaneously, citizens were fed a grand promise: reconstruction would be fast, organized, and complete. It was pledged that by 2021, every family would have the keys to their home.
This promise, repeated in every public appearance by the Prime Minister and the cabinet, became part of a new political narrative, a story of efficiency, determination, and a modern state. Yet, while propaganda built the image, the reality on the ground told a different story: structural problems, insufficient capacities, and bureaucratic procedures looping through the same corridors year after year.
The 2021 Promise vs. the 2026 Reality
Had someone written the chronicle of reconstruction according to the claims made in early 2020, today we would be in a very different place. But the reality is that the years passed, and each brought new explanations: the pandemic, supply chain disruptions, canceled tenders, project revisions, property disputes, and limited municipal capacities.
By 2023, the government claimed that 85% of the work was completed. However, budget figures indicate that the process will extend until the end of 2026, with an additional 5 billion lek planned. This means that a 1–2 year process promised in 2020 will in practice take 7 years.
This time gap is not merely a technical deviation—it is, in fact, a failure of public expectations. And when measured through the Feasibility Index, the picture becomes even clearer.
The Feasibility Index: The Measure Missing from Every Official Statement
If yesterday reconstruction was measured in years, today it must also be measured in economic efficiency. Beyond broken timelines, another indicator emerges with cold, calculative force: the ratio of cost to actual benefit.
In the two years when the closure of the process was promised, only 67 million lek were spent—less than half of what would be consumed by 2026. Under normal emergency management, the bulk of funding should have been deployed in 2020–2021, when the need was acute and urgent.
But the funds were stretched across seven years. Not because it was planned this way, but because a large portion of projects did not reach the construction phase on time. The same issues persisted: repeated tenders, unresolved files, property disputes, and lack of municipal capacity.
Precisely for this reason, the Feasibility Index calculated by Polifakt, which combines time deviation with the cost–benefit ratio, is only 40%. In other words, the process has operated at less than half the efficiency publicly declared.
When Indicators speak louder than statements
According to official financing lines, the reconstruction process is not proceeding at the promised pace. In 2020, the first year after the earthquake, only 320 million lek were spent to address the emergency and start the works—far less than needed for an intensive start. In 2021, the following year, the amount increased slightly to 350 million lek, reflecting an effort to accelerate, but still far below the actual need.
In 2022, expenditures fell to 288 million lek, showing a clear slowdown. In 2023, funds dropped further to 162 million lek, demonstrating that the pace was far from intensive. In 2024, only 90 million lek were allocated (according to Normative act of Government – NA), while forecasts for 2025 and 2026 remain 50 million lek each, per the draft budget and Normative Act 2025.
This flow of funding clearly indicates a trend of delay. A process that should have been intensive from the start has been stretched over seven years, with funds often delayed or used without urgency, turning reconstruction into a slow and fragmented marathon.
The decline in funding does not signal completion, but slowness. Many structures entered the process late; many projects started behind schedule; tenders were repeated multiple times. In some areas, entire new buildings have remained empty for months due to internal administrative problems. Meanwhile, thousands of families have lived in temporary solutions, subsidized rentals, or a “temporary life” lasting nearly an entire political cycle.
Reconstruction as a Mirror of Slow Governance
The history of reconstruction is perhaps the clearest example of how public administration functions in Albania.
- It works, but slowly.
- It plans, but does not meet deadlines.
- It promises, but later revises.
Yes, new schools have been built, new neighborhoods created, and public buildings renovated to good standards. Yet, this does not change the fact that the process was much slower than promised and that the bottleneck was administrative, not financial.
At the end of the day, citizens do not remember inaugurations, they remember waiting.
The Story that Remains
Reconstruction cannot be called a failure. Many tangible achievements exist. But it cannot be labeled a success story in administration either. This process revealed a fundamental problem: the gap between political promise and real implementation capacity.
And when it finally concludes in 2026, the balance will not be purely financial, technical, or urbanistic.It will be, above all, moral.
Its moral is simple: “No government should promise paces it cannot keep, because pace is measured in human lives, and reconstruction has become the story of years lost for people, not just of buildings raised.”