Algeria Exchange Reserves Keep Dropping

Algeria’s exchange reserves dropped to the limits of $ 114.1 billion at the end of December 2016, compared to $144.1 billion at the end of 2015, Governor of the Bank of Algeria, Mohamed Loukel, said on Sunday.

Central Bank’s figures show that the exchange reserves of Algeria dropped by $30 billion between December 2015 and December 2016.

Algerian foreign exchange reserves reached $121.9 billion at the end of September 2016, compared to $ 129 billion at the end of June of the same year.

After a series of high levels, foreign exchange reserves began to decline since 2014, being affected by lower oil prices and exports of hydrocarbons that was accompanied by a clear rise in imports.

Thus the push that characterized the evolution of foreign exchange reserves in recent years noticed a decline in 2014, when it was estimated at $ 195 billion (end of March 2014) to take seriously the large downward by reaching $193.27 billion in June 2014, and then to $185.27 billion in September of the same year.

In the past years, especially after 2006, Algeria’s foreign exchange reserves were growing at a high pace, and sometimes they reached up to $ 20 billion per year, and $ 77.8 billion in December 2006, $ 110.2 billion at the end of 2007, $143.1 billion by the end of 2008, $147.2 billion by the end of 2009, $ 162.2 billion by the end of 2010, $182.2 billion dollars by the end of 2011, and then $190.6 billion at the end of 2012, before reaching $194 billion at the end of 2013.

But the high level of imports and tumbling oil prices led to a decline in the value of remittances that feed the foreign exchange reserves of the country.

Oil prices noticed in the summer of 2014 a new turning point for that was marked by a large and continuing decline, by reaching the levels of $ 30 a barrel in 2016, after prices were ranging between $101.45 and $115.79 per barrel in 2013.