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It's not the Cauliflower Trust, it's the Aruba Cartel!

2026-09-19 11:37:00 / IDE NGA GJERGJ EREBARA
It's not the Cauliflower Trust, it's the Aruba Cartel!

By George Erebara 

On the same day, Minister Delina Ibrahimaj expressed surprise that the strengthening of the lek has not led to a drop in prices, while Prime Minister Edi Rama lashed out with completely meaningless words at a group of listeners that government propaganda presented as "representatives of supermarkets." 

It seems as if, for a moment, Albania is facing a "Cauliflower Trust" situation, but this does not explain anything because prices are not determined by the exchange rate, but by demand and supply.

In 1941, Bertolt Brecht wrote the play "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Uisa", a parable about the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, whom Brecht derisively referred to as "the painter", or "the painter". 

The events take place in 1930s Chicago and tell of a local gangster who first creates a violent monopoly by killing competitors and then rises to power before he can be stopped. This is where the expression "The Cabbage Trust" comes from, which has been popular in Albania since 1971, when Robert Shvarc Albanianized it and Pirro Mani staged it. 

Of course, monopolies and oligopolies and other forms of competition restriction are a common reality in Albania. They are also a reality that has not been fought by the institution that is supposed to fight them, the Competition Authority. The insurance cartel is the most flagrant case, as is the duopoly in the mobile phone market. The import of oil and gas is clearly under the oligopoly regime (where there have been no shortage of attempts to get rid of competition through hired killers). But monopolies and oligopolies are nothing new. What is new is a wave of inflation that does not seem to be well-measured by INSTAT, but has been accepted by the government as worrying. 

But why is this happening?! How did it happen that the lek has strengthened by 40% over the last eight years, but the prices of imported goods, according to INSTAT data, have increased by approximately 9% over the same period?!

So, according to this data, the cost of importing goods has decreased by 40% because the euro today costs 92 lek from 140 lek eight years ago, while prices have increased by 9%.

Ms. Ibrahimi is an economist, and you don't have to be a very good economist to see that you are looking at the problem from the wrong angle. The prices of goods are not determined in the market by costs. Prices are determined by demand and supply. Of course, supply also reflects constraints on competition, but it is more likely that the particularly high inflation of the last two years is not the result of the Cauliflower Trust.

It is more reasonable to see inflation as caused by the catastrophic growth of money in circulation. Money in circulation doesn't matter whether it is euros or lek, if it grows faster than the production of goods and services, it has nothing to cause other than inflation. 

In 2019, on the Caribbean island of Aruba, a meeting of Albanians founded what is now known as the Aruba Corporation or Aruba Cartel. This cartel organized, on the one hand, drug trafficking from Latin America to Europe and then, the laundering of profits in Albania. Hundreds of millions of euros were initially poured into the construction sector. This money logically caused inflation in the prices of apartments, villas and shops. But for many years, their effect was limited to the construction sector.

The side effect of this money was the weakening of the euro against the lek. Then, starting in 2024, the Bank of Albania decided to buy the excess euro, paying in lek. Inflation in the apartment market was thus transferred to the entire economy. The Bank of Albania bought almost 2 billion euros during this time, and paid for it in lek. The excess amount of lek put into circulation in this way has nothing to bring about other than inflation.

So, the Cauliflower Trust is not the problem, or that's a small problem. The problem is the Aruba cartel!

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