Gold Import is Frozen in 2016 Due to Austerity

Finance Ministry did not release, until now, the amounts that are blocked since more than two years for gold importers, which reached the total of 3 billion centimes, at the time when the new conditions’ book, which was withdrawn, some time ago, at the level of the ministry, will freeze the import finally, and the deals are already done by concluding contracts with Italian customers, and until this time, and after five months from the beginning of 2016, no deal was signed to import one gram of the precious metal.

Sources that are relevant to the file confirmed that gold importers are still waiting to recover sums of money that exceed 600 million centimes, by the Finance Minister, while the latter justifies every time the delay with the lack of financial liquidity to compensate them.

Gold import activity remains blocked in Algeria since months ago due to austerity, and no request was provided since the beginning of the current year at the concerned services, at a time when the prices of this product is witnessing a remarkable increase in the national market, after the available reserves finished since the years of affluence, and the price of one gram of imported reached 9,000 ZDZ, while the price of the local gram of gold reached 7,000 ZDZ in recent days.

Representative of gold importers at the General Union of Algerian Traders and Artisans, Radjaa Oumid, said imports stopped definitively since the beginning of the current year, due to the conditions’ book, which he described as “disruptive”, and which was released by the Finance Ministry recently, because it includes impossible conditions like preventing importers from carrying out any resettlement process for importing, or obtaining a license, unless importers prove experience that exceeds 15 years in the field, in in addition to the obligation that the value of imported gold should exceed more than that which exist in the national market twice.

“A number of meetings were held with the Tax Director to take advantage of the dilutions in the book of conditions, but the latter did not release a new measure, in addition to the obligation to declare the goods that are imported from abroad, on the same day, otherwise importers will be subjected to a fine. Inventory that is existing in the national market has run out, and new quantities of gold should be imported to prevent the closure of factories and workshops, especially since the local gold is unable to meet all the needs of the market and control prices.”

Previously, AGENOR company stopped, since months, the export of quantities that were marketed to dealers, and which does not exceed a few kilos, recalling the years of affluence, when Algeria imported within one year and a few months, since the end of 2012 until the end of 2013, the equivalent of 2,000 kg of gold.