Rationalization does not mean outright sale. The banks will consider disposing operations that absorb disproportional amounts of capital and (scarce) liquidity. However they do not intend to proceed to fire sales of self-funded, efficient business units, a situation that characterizes most subsidiaries of Greek banks in Albania. But I will come back to this issue.
With corporate profits continuing to improve and business sentiment being generally favorable, business fixed investment, particularly in the non-manufacturing sector, has increased moderately. Moreover, even in the manufacturing sector, which had been lagging, a clear recovery in business fixed investment can be observed (Chart 4).