Three-Fold Increase in Dollar, Euro Demand in Algeria

The price of the euro and the dollar rose, on Sunday, in the black market for hard currency, in an unprecedented manner, as the trading price of the dollar reached 198 dinars for purchase and 195 dinars for sale, while the price of the euro reached 219 dinars for purchase and 217 dinars for sale, exceeding all the numbers recorded during the past months.

Experts link this rise to the recent procedures for regulating the import process by imposing a list of goods concerned with the temporary additional fee that includes 2,608 products and approving fees on imported goods through postal parcels.

The price of hard currency, the dollar and the euro, exceeded all previous records at the level of black points, and the currency exchangers attributed the reason for this rise to the increasing demand for the European and American currency during the last hours by what they called the “suitcase” traders or undeclared importers in light of the measures taken to restrict official imports and reduce the import bill, as the two currencies, the euro and the dollar, witnessed a three-fold increase in their demand, according to experts’ estimates, on Sunday and Saturday.

In a statement to Echorouk, the economic expert, Kamal Si Mohamed, said; “The higher the demand for the euro and the dollar in the parallel market is, its price will increase exponentially. As the main controller in the black market for hard currency in Port Said Square in the capital, Algiers, or even the rest of the parallel points in most of the country’s cities, is supply and demand, justifying the high demand for hard currency in recent days because many citizens choose to import their needs through the “suitcase” for resale in the Algerian market, which is a popular trade in the past decades”.

“The suitcase trade disappeared in recent years after the door to importing was opened widely in front of a large number of importers, which at one time exceeded 45,000, to return today to the fore through “disguised” import attempts after the number of importers decreased by more than 30.000 because the owners of questionable commercial records were cancelled”, he added.

“The only way to curb the increasing rise in the price of hard currency at the level of the parallel markets for the sale of hard currency is to open official exchange offices and grant credits to the black market traders for legal activity, in exchange for setting a ceiling interest rate and obligating them to pay the necessary taxes and fees, which will also enable from recovering dormant funds on the black market, which President Abdelmadjid Tebboune previously estimated at $90 billion.

The list of imported goods concerned with the temporary additional fee included 2,608 products, whose fees are supposed to range between 30 and 100%, while goods imported via postal parcels included fees ranging between 70 and 160%, in implementation of Articles 123, 128, 129, 135, 136 and 138 of the Finance Law of 2022, which amend and supplement the provisions of Articles 16 bis 12, 16 bis 07 of the Customs Law.