DPA – The head of the Libyan Presidential Council, Mohamed Al-Manfi, said, “The continued increase in public spending, especially the dangerous inflation in the fuel subsidy item for the year 2023, requires urgent and decisive treatment of the policies of public institutions and not burdening its consequences with the citizen.”
Al-Manfi indicated, in a series of tweets on his official account on the “X” website (formerly Twitter), on Sunday night, that the Council intends to form technical subcommittees, in order to verify the reasons for the inflation of the two spending sections for salaries and fuel subsidies, as well as to discuss ways to save the Libyan economy, indicating that The Council will adhere to the committee’s recommendations, and at the same time call on all Libyan institutions concerned with public spending to notify their representatives to participate in the first meeting of the Supreme Finance Committee for the year 2024, which will be held next week.
In recent months, Libya has been witnessing an economic and financial crisis that has caused an unresolved dispute between the head of the National Unity Government, Abdul Hamid Al-Dabaiba, and the Governor of the Central Bank, Al-Siddiq Al-Kabir.
The most prominent images of the crisis were evident in the decline in the value of the Libyan dinar in the parallel market to about 7.25 against the US dollar (while it is 4.85 in the official market), and the rise in commodity prices with the scarcity of cash liquidity in commercial banks, which is something that was attributed to the increase in public spending by the Tripoli government. According to previous statements by the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Governor of the Central Bank.
Al-Dabaiba recently threatened to cancel fuel subsidies, and assigned a specialized committee to examine alternatives to fuel subsidies, the current price of which is estimated at 150 Libyan dirhams, or 3 American cents, according to the official price of the Libyan currency, which exacerbated the problem of fuel smuggling abroad.
Within the Central Bank in Tripoli, indicators varied regarding spending on fuel, as the bank’s periodic data indicated spending of 60 billion dinars during the last three years, at a rate of 20 billion per year.
While a letter from the governor, which he addressed last February to Dabaiba, stated that commodity support last year amounted to 61 billion dinars, 41 of which were related to fuel.
As for salaries, spending on them increased from 33 billion dinars in 2021 to 65 billion in 2023, at a rate of 60% of public spending, according to the same speech.
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2024-04-09 04:45:50
