Bank of Algeria: Trading, transfer of hard currency under tight control
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The Bank of Algeria started the preparation of a series of corrective actions to address the worsening in the annual import bill, which is expected to exceed $65 billion by the end of this year.
The import bill that was recorded during the first half of this year, reached the level of $28.35 billion compared to $24.02 billion during the same period of last year, with an increase of 18 on a semi-annual basis.
Measures that were initiated by the Bank of Algeria shed more control over sectors that consume large shares of Algeria reserves of hard currency, both in operations related to annual profit transfer towards foreign countries or in the financing of foreign trade operations that are carried out by these companies.
These measures aimed to keep Algeria reserves of foreign exchange, tightening control on the importation of cars and other import activities of products which are sold on the condition and activities related to shipping services, import services and all operations related to banking services of the foreign trade operations.
Algerian import companies use the exchange reserves directly to finance its foreign operations, threatening the draining of these reserves in less than three years at the current pace of imports, which offset a decline in exports as a result of the structural decline of Algeria’s exports of hydrocarbons that is accompanied with concomitant decline in the rate of oil prices in the global markets and the full deficit in transferring the important imports during the last decade to an economic growth outside the hydrocarbons, as a result of the nature of imports, which represent in its largest part of consumed products.
