Parliament to Start 2025 With Discussions on Trade and Industry

The Finance and Economic Affairs Committees of the National People’s Assembly will begin the year 2025 with intensive parliamentary activity, aiming to evaluate the performance of the economic sectors in Algeria during 2024.

This activity focuses on finance, digitalization, industry, and local and foreign trade. It organizes information missions to several wilayas to inspect the projects of these sectors and the extent of their officials’ commitment to implementing the instructions of the Council of Ministers in the field. In addition, it schedules hearings for the ministers of the relevant sectors.

Members of the National People’s Assembly assert that this parliamentary move reflects a political will to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the economic policies pursued during the past period. It opens the door to comprehensive discussions on mechanisms to enhance economic development and ways to implement the instructions of the higher authorities and the President of the Republic’s program, which includes raising Algeria’s GDP to $400 billion in 2027.

In this context, Kamal Belakhdar, a member of the Finance and Budget Committee of the National People’s Assembly, reveals the preparation for the resumption of the finance committee’s activity at the NPA, which will receive in the coming hours the draft law on the settlement of the budget for 2022, and the report of the Audit Council on it. The draft law on the new insurance presented in the Government Council will also be received in the coming weeks, and it is expected to be submitted to the President in the Council of Ministers for approval to be referred to Parliament.

The Finance Committee will also meet next week to study the file of the information missions that will target institutions and bodies affiliated with the financial sector, to examine their commitment to the digitization procedures ordered by the President of the Republic, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, and to make it a priority to eliminate bureaucracy in these bodies and facilitate service for citizens and economic operators at the same time. This primarily concerns the General Directorate of National Property, which recently announced significant progress related to the land registry and several new platforms.

The activities include tax interests, which revealed significant progress in the field of digitizing payment and settlement operations and relations between the administration and the citizen, where the extent of the implementation of the content of these statements in reality and the field will be examined.

The same activities will also include the facilities affiliated with the General Directorate of Customs, which announced that it has made significant progress in the digitization program. A report will be prepared on the progress of digitization in these three sectors affiliated with the Ministry of Finance and submitted to the Presidency of the National People’s Assembly, and a copy will be sent to the higher authorities, knowing that this information missions will initially include three southern and western wilayas, and may be expanded later.

For his part, Youcef Adjissa, a member of the National People’s Assembly’s Economic Affairs, Trade and Planning Committee, told Echorouk that another program for information activities is being prepared at the committee level to inspect the bodies and institutions concerned with the investment sector and also to visit public industrial institutions during the next phase, to assess the progress of their activity and the level of their performance during 2024, while hearings will be scheduled for the ministers concerned with the trade and industry sector.

This primarily concerns the Minister of Internal Trade and National Market Control, Tayeb Zitouni, who was scheduled last November but did not attend due to commitments and a government agenda, where he will explain the measures taken to ensure Ramadan’s prices for citizens, as well as the new Minister of Foreign Trade, Mohamed Boukhari, to respond to the export and import files and his vision of how to manage the National Agency for the Promotion of Foreign Trade “ALGEX”, which raised MPs’ questions during the discussion of the Finance Law for 2025.

The request to hear the Minister of Industry and Pharmaceutical Production, Sifi Gharib, who began his activities as soon as he was appointed, will also be scheduled, with orientation meetings with officials in his sector to draw up a roadmap for the industry.