In the meantime, the low volume of credit to agriculture speaks for constant structural problems that inhibit lending to this sector. Given the geographical coverage with loans, it is observed that 68 percent of the portfolio is concentrated in Tirana. Durrës and Vlora come afterwards, by respectively 8 and 4 percent of the loans portfolio. This reveals the high economic importance of Tirana, and the need for improving the economic infrastructure in the rest of the country. Net foreign assets The foreign currency position of the banking system improved during 2006. Net foreign assets of the banking system amounted to $ 2.4 billion at yearend, recording an annual growth of about $ 440 million. Government demand for money The government account has had an unusual performance during 2006. During the major part of the year, the government demand for money was negative, concentrating the planned domestic borrowing on two last months of the year. The overall deficit financing for 2006 resulted to about ALL 22.6 billion. 5. Financial market and interest rates  Year 2006 was characterised by an increased activity in money and capital market, while the interest rate performance was generally oriented by the Bank of Albania’s monetary policy. Under the conditions of excess liquidity, the interest rates had a downward trend during the first half of the year. The interest rates went upward after the tightening signal of monetary conditions in the second half of the year.
This has entailed a turnaround in our balance of payment on current account, and will lead in 2013 to a positive contribution of the external sector to GDP of around 2%, the best performance by this variable in recent decades. Competitiveness and export capacity also depend on how productive resources are distributed across sectors and across companies within a single sector. One fundamental challenge the Spanish economy faces is to reallocate the surplus productive resources in non-tradeable sectors to others with higher growth and export potential. At the aggregate level, 8% of the firms existing in 2007 have been destroyed in the 2007–2012 period, while in the construction sector this figure exceeds 30%. In the industrial and services sectors, and having due regard to their high heterogeneity, positive signs are discernible. The sectoral reallocation is only just beginning and still has a long way to run. Economic policy has to contribute to completing this process by removing the obstacles associated with barriers to competition and the red tape hindering business start-ups. Some recent legislative initiatives which pursue these objectives are the law on business support measures, the law to ensure market unity and the future law on professional services and colleges. Market unity and legal certainty are absolutely necessary for sustained growth and job creation, and can and should be objectives shared by government at all levels. Another task is that of completing the adjustment of Spanish corporate and household debt.