However, Kosovo maintains a low level of government debt, future liabilities, and a strong banking sector (despite remaining obstacles to using this for productive loans).

[24] The Kosovan diaspora accounts for a large portion of the economy and the inflow of capital to Kosovo through remittances, which contribute significantly to both household consumption as well as investment in businesses.

[26] During the 1990s, the abolition of the province's autonomous institutions was followed by poor economic policies, international sanctions, little access to external trade and finance, and ethnic conflict.

[27] After strong increases in 2000 and 2001, as a result of postwar reconstruction and foreign assistance, growth in gross domestic product (GDP) was negative in 2002.

The economy and its growth are mainly sustained by demand-related factors rather than production, as shown by its current account balance, which amounted to a deficit of about 20% of GDP in 2011.

Under applicable Kosovo law, there are also substantial assets from privatisation of socially-owned enterprises, also invested abroad by the Central Bank, which should mostly accrue to the Government when liquidation processes have been completed.

[28] Since the housing stock in Kosovo is generally good by South-East European standards, this suggests that (if the legal system's ability to enforce claims on collateral and resolve property issues is trusted), credit to Kosovars could be safely expanded.

[32] The U.N. Interim Administration and Kosovo institutions have signed free-trade agreements with Croatia,[33] Bosnia and Herzegovina,[34] Albania,[35] North Macedonia.

[38] The IMF have pointed out that informal employment is widespread, and the ratio of wages to per capita GDP is the second highest in South-East Europe; the true rate may therefore be lower.

Much of the reason is, apart from a late start in 2000–2001, because of legal and political uncertainties, and an incomplete, contested, and very slow system of privatisation before the declaration of independence in 2008.

While there are significant disincentives to investment in Kosovo (a small domestic market, residual political uncertainty, perceptions of corruption, and a slow and uncertain judicial system), there are also incentives.

Information and communications technology in Kosovo has also developed very rapidly and broadband internet penetration is comparable to the European Union average.

Should the employee fail to improve after receiving a warning, termination of employment will occur before the date originally stipulated within the contract signed by both parties.

There are plans to stop subsidising free power supplies for consumers in four Serb-majority municipalities, which had been costing millions of euros a year.

In Kosovo there is substantially high reserves of lead, zinc, silver, nickel, cobalt, copper, iron and bauxite.

Canadian company Avrupa Minerals Ltd has achieved the rights to a three-year mining programme, which is expected to start in summer 2011.

[84] However, Kosovo has a high density of population and buildings by South-Eastern European standards, and full exploitation of these resources at an acceptable environmental cost may not be easy.

The first systematic records of lignite exploitation date from 1922, when small-scale, shallow underground room-and-pillar mining commenced in the Kosovo Basin.

The average stripping ratio is 1.7m3 of waste to one tonne of coal and the total estimated economically exploitable resource represents one of the richest in Europe, which would allow ambitious power generation and expansion schemes in forthcoming decades.

Modern mining began in the 1930s, when the British company Selection Trust Ltd revamped the Trepca Complex, including the development of a battery factory that utilised the lead.

This zone follows the major fault that marks the eastern margin of the Miocene Pristina basin, and its extension to the NNW and the intrusive and volcanic complexes in northern Kosovo.

Current estimates for combined mineable reserves for the five mines have been undertaken, but all of the deposits are open at depth and their strike lengths are uncertain, owing to a lack of systematic exploration and definition drilling.

[citation needed] A chain of Alpine-type chromite pods in southwestern Kosovo are part of a series of linear deposits that continue into Albania.

These pods are small but of high grade and in Albania are known to possess enhanced levels of platinum group metals (PGM).

Kosovo's bauxite deposits are hosted in karst limestone and have been exploited in a series of pits that comprise the Grebnik mine.

The mine had a fines mixing and bagging facility to produce wall plaster; production was 5,000 t/y, for the domestic market, and Montenegro and North Macedonia.

Kosovo is rich in high quality construction minerals, such as andesite, basalt, diabas, gabbro, granite, limestone and marble.

[87] The political instability after the suppression of Kosovo's autonomy and the subsequent war led to a collapse of the wine industry and destruction of much of the winemaking infrastructure in the 1990s.

Kosovo's liberal trade regime is characterized by simplicity and neutrality, key features considered to be important for stimulating private sector led growth as well as creating the conditions for healthy exports.

[97] The United States and Kosovo in September 2012, signed a groundbreaking agricultural development credit scheme worth over €20 million.