Thirty-Two Months For Algerian Government To Cancel Import Licenses To European Union

The Euro and the Dollar exchange rates on Thursday rose to 192 Algerian units per 1 Euro and 176 units per 1 Dollar in a first occurrence of the like over the past nine months. This comes a week after the Ministry of Trade announced the introduction of import licenses for a number of products and materials with the implementation of this new procedure set to start as from 15 April, that is a few weeks before the legislative elections and coinciding with the season of Umrah or small pilgrimage and the advent of the holy month of fasting of Ramadhan.

The Euro and the Dollar exchange rates on Thursday rose to 192 Algerian units per 1 Euro and 176 units per 1 Dollar in a first occurrence of the like over the past nine months. This comes a week after the Ministry of Trade announced the introduction of import licenses for a number of products and materials with the implementation of this new procedure set to start as from 15 April, that is a few weeks before the legislative elections and coinciding with the season of Umrah or small pilgrimage and the advent of the holy month of fasting of Ramadhan.
The demand for the Euro and Dollar currencies is meanwhile increasing at the informal market notably at the request of importers and citizens heading to Umrah (Saudi Arabia), with a single Euro expected to reach 200 Dinars in the upcoming hours and until 15 April.
The head of the Algerian Confederation of Employers, Mr Boualem Merakchi, pointed to this effect to the Government’s projected intention to devalue further and float the national currency, despite the stern advice of the World Bank, which warned against this risk-fraught option.
The spokesman told “Echorouk” that he recently met with representatives of the World Bank in Marrakech, Morocco, who told him that the devaluation and the floating of the national currency the Dinar won’t serve the national economy in particular, especially that Algeria is still a country that imports a lot from abroad, stressing that the World Bank warned the Algerian authorities out of fear of the collapse of the Dinar currency, which woefully continues to erode day after day.
Referring to the newly-introduced import licensing system, he asserted that “this procedure is only transient as the licenses won’t last for more than 32 months, as Algeria will then have to respect the terms of the EU Association Agreement and their final abolition in January 2019, and the commitment to fully open trade exchanges between the two sides,” as he put it.