FCE Forum seeks freezing of state subsidies for fuel, water and bread!

The Forum of the Heads of National Enterprises (FCE) has called on the Government to review its social policy in terms of subsidies destined to the underprivileged segments of the Algerian population. The document that the president of the main Employers’ Organisation, Ali Haddad, presented on Monday morning to the Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal during a meeting that brought them together in Algiers, dissects the policy of subsidies undertaken by Algeria for many years now.

The CFE highlighted by the same token a set of proposals for change of that aid so that it really benefits to the disadvantaged. In this expounded document put forth to the Premier and entitled: “Reorientation of the subsidy policy for the benefit of the poorest”, the FCE suggests the outright cancellation of the absolute support for the commodity prices of wide consumption and even  the subsidy granted by the state to certain products and sectors.

In exchange, the employers’ organization proposed the creation of an allowance of solidarity for the people and the  households concerned. 

The CFE classifies them into three categories: the first relates to households living below the poverty line andrepresenting 9 million or 1.8 million households and for which the State must devote 216 billion dinars per year; the second category are households whose income is situated at the level of the SNMG or (the monthly national minimum guaranteed wage). 

The latter represent 1.2 million homes or 6 million inhabitants. This section of the Algerian population  should benefit from financial support of 115 billion dinars a year, finally, the third  section is made up of  people who have an income equal to 1.5 times the SNMG, that is 600 000 families or 1.2 million people to whom the State must grant 28.8 billion dinars annually.

In short, the amount of this allowance of solidarity that should benefit 18 million people is expected to reach a financial package of 359.8 billion dinars.

The new aid apparatus proposed by the employers’ organization  should be managed by a national National Solidarity Fund (CNSN). 

As for the Census of deprived persons, it should be devolved upon the various municipal Assemblies departments (APC)  which should establish and update a national file including all the list of underprivileged sections of the population.

For the CFE, the impact of the all-out aid granted by for many years now by the State has had a negative impact on the society, arguing that such an unbridled state assistance was at the origin of the abuses, the deviations, the wastes and the sprawling informal trade that now beset the country. 

“This policy of solidarity funds continue to increase”, noted the FCE in a document conveyed to the press. It recalled that in 2014, the amount spent to support prices and subsidies and social transfers amounted to $ 60 billion, or 30 per cent of Algeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). 

A sum that weighs on the State budget in these times marked by the steady decline in world oil prices, it underscored as a telling argument.