Algeria’s Public Treasury: 60 thousand billion centimes (DA) spent within 3 months!

The Governor of the Bank of Algeria, Mohamed Laksaci, said that a sharp deterioration of macroeconomic indicators was recorded in the first nine months of 2015.

Laksaci added that the country’s tight monetary and financial conditions are due to the drastic fall in oil prices, which has led to a significant decline in Algeria’s overall foreign exchange reserves which plummeted to 152.7 billion dollars by the end of September 2015.

In one year, these foreign currency reserves shrank to 32.57 billion dollars, as their level was set at 185.27 billion US dollars in September 2014.

One the other hand, Mr Laksaci indicated that within three months, the Public Treasury had lost 607.7 billion dinars, the equivalent of more than 60 thousand billion centimes, at a time when inflation was at its highest level, ie 5.3% until September, and as a result the country witnessed a 40% erosion of its hard currency reserves within a nine-month period, he explained.

Regarding the country’s trade balance deficit, Mr Mohamed Laksaci said, it was set at 12.82 billion dollars in the first nine months of 2015.

As a way of comparison, the country’s foreign trade was in surplus to the tune of 2.93 billion dollars during the same period of the previous year.

Therefore, the 11.78% registered decline in imports was not enough to offset the collapse in revenues stemming from hydrocarbons exports in the aftermath of the severe drop in world oil prices.

Consequently, Laksaci underlined that the fall in oil prices has had a negative impact on Algeria’s public finances which reaped 2603.4 trillion dinars in the first nine months of 2014 and later slumped to 1834.14 trillion dinars for the same period the following year.