APN Discusses Ways to Raise the Tourism Grant File
Members of the Finance and Budget Committee of the National People’s Assembly opened the file of raising the tourist grant for Algerians heading abroad, which today is equivalent to 100 euros or a little less, in exchange for DZD 15.000.
They received officials of the financial and banking sector at the council’s headquarters over the past week, who confirmed that this grant is sometimes not enough even to pay the price of the taxi that the Algerian takes from the airport to the hotel of residence in a European country.
During the closed sessions that brought together members of the Finance and Budget Committee of the Council over the past week with officials of the financial and monetary sector, on the occasion of discussing the new monetary and banking law, which included the Minister of Finance, the President of the Professional Association of Banks and Financial Institutions, and the Director of Accounting and Executives of the Bank of Algeria, the file was raised by the MPs, who confirmed that the time has come to raise this grant, coinciding with the important decisions contained in the new draft law, such as opening exchange offices, creating the Algerian digital currency, digital banks, payment intermediaries, reviving the stock exchange and other provisions which are not commensurate with the tourist grant for Algerians being limited to $100 or less, at a time when the President of the Professional Association of Banks wrote down this demand, pending its presentation by the MPs to the Governor of the Bank of Algeria next Tuesday.
In this context, a member of the Finance and Budget Committee of the Council, Abdelkader Beriche, said in a statement to Echorouk that the file of the tourism grant is one of the important issues that were raised to the officials of the banking sector and that the Governor of the Bank of Algeria, Salaheddine Taleb, will be questioned about it upon his arrival at the Zighoud Youcef building in Algiers next Tuesday, to discuss the provisions of the new monetary and banking project, by presenting constructive proposals.
Beriche stressed the need to raise the tourism grant, which he said currently does not provide even the price of one night’s stay in a hotel abroad, or even the price of a taxi from the airport to the centre of the country in a European country, confirming the importance of conducting a careful study to determine the value of the grant in the future in light of what is in practice in countries whose economic situation is similar to Algeria’s one, taking into account several facts, including the rising prices and the global wave of inflation, considering that the most important thing in the future is that this grant will increase in a way that preserves the dignity of the Algerian nationals when they travel abroad.
A member of the Finance Committee believes that restoring the tourism grant and raising it should fall within the framework of a comprehensive view of reforming the exchange system in Algeria in terms of regulating the exchange market, allowing the approval of exchange offices, eliminating the informal and illegal currency market, and the need to dry up its sources, and most importantly, answering a fundamental question: “What are the sources of supply of foreign currency in the informal exchange market? Taking note of these sources and draining them is the first step towards eliminating this parallel trade, which monopolizes huge sums of hard currency that can be used for suspicious practices and crimes”.
Algerians heading abroad are everytime shocked to receive no more than 100 Euro tourism grant, compared to 15,000 Algerian dinars, which is the lowest figure ever since it was set in 1996 against the Algerian dinar, 27 years ago. This policy was met with widespread disapproval, mainly since this value is usually spent abroad for one day only. Meanwhile, many Algerians are forced to resort to the black market for the acquisition of Euros costing them sometimes over 215 dinars for a single euro.
The decline in the value of the tourism grant is due primarily to the devaluation of the Algerian dinar; for example, the Euro’s price was comparable only to DZD 89 by its inception in 1999. This leads to a significant deterioration in the value of the tourism grant for Algerian travellers abroad.
The exchange rate of banks is not the same as the tourism exchange rate, to which the tourism margin is added. Such addition is the reason behind the decrease in the grant value that Algerians travelling abroad complained about, knowing that this margin is usually equivalent to 10% of the total amount of such grant.
Algerians are also curious about the secret behind the Algerian bank’s method of counting the grant’s value in dinars even though the Algerian dinar today does not have the same value it had in 1996, in addition to the need to take into account the high inflation rate.
The existence of a foreign currency black market is one of the reasons that compelled the Bank of Algeria not to raise the grant’s value, as it is not appropriate to waste more of Algeria’s savings on foreign currencies and transfer them towards other countries. Those who wish to go abroad can purchase Euros from the black market, unlike the rates employed by commercial banks which are much cheaper. However, many patients travelling abroad for treatment and students heading to study outside Algeria find themselves in an embarrassing situation.
