Import bill exceeds $75 billion by the end of 2013

Experts expected the total currency conversions from Algeria outward, under various formulas, will exceed the level of 75 billion dollars by the end of this year, as a result of the exaggerated rise of the phenomenon of importing goods and the high level of services and profits of foreign companies which are operating in Algeria, coinciding with the decline in confidence in the Algerian dinar in favor of other international currencies such as the Euro, which has become a security currency for traders and economists, and even the ordinary citizen.

Abderrahmane Ben Khalfa, an economist told Echorouk, that the decline of confidence in the dinar has contributed strongly to the emergence of the phenomena of excessive import and currency smuggling, adding that the government is required to address the two phenomena in the short term by tightening control mechanisms at the level of banks and the Customs and the services of the Trade Ministry, and at the level of the authorities responsible for the management of ports, in order to reduce the amplification based on import prices and import placebo, and in the long term through economic measures aiming at increasing the supply of national goods and services, and support the competitiveness of the Algerian enterprise, and effective control of the parallel market.

The spokesman added that reducing the high import bill requires the restoration of confidence in the national currency (the dinar), pressing the need to convince the Algerian citizen that the dinar is also a wealth, similar to other currencies such as the Euro and the U.S. dollar, and therefore the citizen must be convinced like the economic dealer of the necessity of saving Dinars.

“Some traders use the importation as a cover for smuggling their local wealth with Dinars to abroad, to save it in hard currencies and trust it better, which makes it imperative for the government to impose a national political advancement of the national currency”.

The spokesman called for re-examine the system of the current exchange rate in order to ensure small applications for ordinary citizens, such as the right to medical treatment abroad, tourism and study, noting that preventing citizens from using the purchasing power of the dinar which they owned in operations they needed out of the country, such as the study, treatment or buying medicine or benefiting from good tourism grants, means that confidence in the local currency of the country is broken, and this feeds doubts in this currency, which compels the citizen to go to the black market.