Five Improvised Economic Decisions By The Government May Exacerbate The Situation

Former Prime Minister, Ahmed Benbitour, and former Trade Minister, Hachemi Jaâboub, have warned against the seriousness of the economic situation now gripping the country.

Both sounded the alarm, warning against a looming social explosion against a backdrop of hovering privatizations of public companies, car factories, import prohibitions, industrial property and the printing of fresh money by the Bank of Algeria.

Former Prime Minister Ahmed Benbitour  and former Government member Hachemi Jaâboub used the economic seminar organized by the Nahda movement on Tuesday in Algiers to warn against the bleak situation  stemming from the “adventurous economic decisions” taken of late by the Government. 

Mr. Benbitour did not waver to dub this adverse situation now confronting the country as “the result of gross mismanagement and utter dilution”.

In terms of figures, Mr.  Benbitour highlighted the most important statistics that reveal the telling deterioration of the country’s economic situation. He argued to this effect that the country’s import bill is woefully continuing to rise. 

In 2001, it reached $ 12 billion dollars and in 2016, $ 68 billion dollars, he indicated. 

Moreover, “the budget of the administration increased by 47 percent in one year, in addition to a decline in the volume of exports, which fell in 2006 by 25 percent in line with the subsequent severe drop in the price of a barrel of oil on the world market”, he further underlined.

The former Trade minister, Mr. Hachemi Jaàboub, also concurred on the matter and didn’t hesitate to draw a black picture of the country’s ongoing economic juncture. 

He accused the Government of misjudging and making ambiguous decisions. 

“Despite the improved investment climate in Algeria in recent years, the country’s officials have failed to attract fresh capital, Mr. Jaàboub said, stressing that the repeated amendments brought to the investment law, had made foreigners very wary  to invest their money in Algeria, and thereby they resorted to neighboring countries such as Morocco and Tunisia because of the myriad business facilities granted there.